| Sumario: | During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, workplace accidents came to be perceived as a serious public health problem. Preventive safety policies were implemented in industrialising nations. The impact of these policies, however, has received little attention. This article shows that early safety policies in Spain failed and, as a result, workplace safety tended to deteriorate. It confirms that legal regulation of safety standards and factory inspection, the strategy that became predominant in Europe, had little effect on reducing accidents. The International Labour Organization proposed supplementing legislation with further strategies that were well established in the USA, namely the use of workers' compensation programmes as an economic incentive for employers to invest in safety, and cooperation between employers and labour through the so-called Safety First movement. This article, however, argues that these strategies were difficult to adopt in Spain.
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