Industrial Terror at the Flour Mill
A young worker narrowly escapes death after his clothing snags on a high-speed line shaft at the Preston-Parton flouring mill.
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.
A young man by the name of James Kinder was caught in a line shaft at the Preston-Parton flouring mill last Friday morning and was severely injured, narrowly escaping instant death. Young Kinder came to this city from the Sound country a couple of weeks ago seeking work. He was employed to help pile wheat on the first floor. On Friday morning, while at work, he reached across a line shaft for some purpose when his shirt sleeve caught on some projection. The shaft was turning 120 revolutions a minute and in an instant he was whirling around the shaft. Every stitch of clothing he had on was torn from his body, which fact alone probably saved his life. Had his clothing been stronger, he could scarcely have been rescued alive. As it was, he was terribly bruised and has been confined to his bed since, although it is thought he received no internal injuries.
“The shaft was turning 120 revolutions a minute and in an instant he was whirling around the shaft.”
Workplace safety in the early 20th century was brutal and often relied on the 'luck' of clothing tearing away. This account of industrial trauma in a flour mill illustrates the high cost of labor before modern OSHA regulations mandated machine guarding.
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