Milling

Title: Statistics of Injuries
Type: Data
Date: 1912
Source: Bureau of Labor, Industries, and Commerce

Description: Milling was a dangerous occupation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These tables show the kinds of injuries workers encountered at their jobs.

Activities:

1. What kinds of injuries were you least likely to have if you worked in the mill? What injuries were you most likely to have?
   
   
   
   
   Answer: The least-reported injuries were scalds and burns. You were most likely to be bruised, cut, to lose one ormore fingers, or to break bones.
2. Why might the injuries in question 1 be more uncommon than others?
   
   
   
   
   Answer: Since milling mostly involves grinding up wheat, there probably wasn't a lot of equipment that would causeheat injuries. Steam engines and boilers were used, however, when the water level in the river was low, and these could cause heat injuries.
3. In which time period were the fatalities in the mills the highest?
   
   
   
   
   Answer: The most fatalities occurred during 1909-1910, but the chart does not provide us with any information about why fatalities were high that year or why they dropped in later years.
4. Does the change in the number of injuries from year to year have any important meaning?
   
   
   
   
   Answer: Probably not. The numbers are actually pretty steady throughout the years. The tables tell us something about who got injured and how, but don't seem to indicate a big change.