A Mill Worker's Life-Altering Injury
A tragic shift in the Cosmopolis sawmills leaves a man permanently disabled, highlighting the dangers of early industrial timber work.
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.
Quite a serious accident occurred at the Cosmopolis mill last Monday morning, whereby Wm. McRae came near losing his life, and will have a crippled arm for the remainder of his days. He had been working in the saw mill for some time and had that morning been transferred to the shingle mill. In some way the shingle bolts fouled on the carrier and in endeavoring to straighten them out, one struck him and knocked him against the saw. In an instant it had cut into the shoulder and almost severed the end of the humerus, or main bone of the arm. He was brought to Aberdeen on the steamer Josie Burrows and taken to St. Josephs hospital, where Drs. Stapp and Pearson dressed the wound. It was necessary, in order to save not only the arm but his life, to cut the end of the bone entirely off and draw up the arm so as to make a new joint. He is getting along nicely, and the doctors think he will have the use of the hand and, with the exception of stiffness, a serviceable arm.
“It was necessary, in order to save not only the arm but his life, to cut the end of the bone entirely off and draw up the arm so as to make a new joint.”
In the 1890s, the timber mills of Grays Harbor were the region's lifeblood but exacted a brutal toll on the human body. Today, safety regulations have evolved, but the vulnerability of low-wage industrial laborers remains a recurring theme in the history of Washington's resource economy.
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