Industrial Terror at the Shingle Mill
A Mount Vernon mill worker is gravely injured after a jointer wheel explodes, sending lethal blades through the building like cannonballs.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
M. C. Johnson, part owner of a shingle mill south of Mount Vernon, was dangerously and perhaps fatally injured today by the bursting of a jointer wheel weighing 200 pounds. Johnson was screwing down a bolter on the journal box close to the wheel when it flew to pieces. The hub of the jointer flew about in fragments, and one of the ten-pound knives went past the ear of a man who was jointing shingles, and shooting through two floors, went out through the roof like a cannon ball and up into the air fully 100 feet. Another of the knives struck Johnson over the temple, plowing up the scalp and crushing the skull. There were five knives in the wheel and they were all scattered about, while particles of iron from the jointer could be found among the stacks of shingle bolts in the yard. It was a miracle that several men were not killed outright. Dr. West reported Johnson resting easy and the chances for recovery probably about even.
“One of the ten-pound knives went past the ear of a man who was jointing shingles, and shooting through two floors, went out through the roof like a cannon ball.”
This accounts for the horrific physical risks once synonymous with the Pacific Northwest timber industry. While modern OSHA regulations have drastically reduced these industrial accidents, the memory of these 'widow-maker' mills remains a dark undercurrent in regional history.
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