What It Was Like For Those Who Worked In The Iron Mills In The Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

An explosion of gas, a slipping of the furnace, a cave-in of the furnace stack, a tilted ladle, a cracked converter, an overturning of a pile of iron, the breaking of a rotten scaffold . . . these are some of the most common of death-dealing [conditions] which make human life in and about iron mills and locomotive works as precarious as upon a field of battle.
And for all this slaughter . . . [management gives] but one answer: “Carelessness on the part of the injured person"


Taken from an earlier 1900's report on Iron Mills.