SOME PROBLEMS OF AGRICULTURAL LABOR 849 



time it is incumbent on every person to exert his best effort to provide 

 the open country with such intellectual and social interests as well 

 lessen the appeal and attractiveness of the saloon. 



273. THE ACCIDENT HAZARD IN FARM WORK' 

 BY DON D. LESCOHIER 



The substitution of power machinery for hand labor has made 

 agriculture a hazardous industry. Corn shredders, grain separators, 

 gasoline engines, threshers, cream separators, and other forms of 

 machinery have changed the character of agricultural processes until 

 much of the labor in the industry has become more analogous, both 

 in method and in danger, to factory work than to the earlier agricul- 

 ture. Not only this, but much of the machinery used is far more 

 dangerous than that used in most factories, for sufficient attention 

 has not been paid to guarding it. The public has not known enough 

 about the number and the causes of accidents on farms to realize 

 that farmers need legal protection against unguarded machinery as 

 badly as do factory workers. Prevention is further retarded by the 

 fact that the accidents are distributed over so wide an area that the 

 persons injured do not combine and crystallize a sentiment for pro- 

 tection. When five men in a factory are killed in a year, the opera- 

 tives begin to ask why these accidents are happening and how they 

 can be prevented; but when as many occur among the same number 

 of farmers they do not realize that they have need to co-operate for 

 protection. 



Sixteen fatal accidents, two likely to prove fatal, eighty-five 

 serious injuries, and thirty-two severe ones a total of 135 accidents- 

 were reported from Minnesota's agriculture during the past twenty 

 months [September, 1911], eighty-two of them, including four fatali- 

 ties, in the last four months. Probably we do not get a full report 

 of all accidents; certainly the returns for the first twelve months were 

 decidedly incomplete. The figures given must be considered as 

 illustrations rather than statistics. 



Forty-one per cent of these accidents occurred on com shredders, 

 which are the most dangerous agricultural machines in use in the 

 Northwest. The Minnesota legislature passed a law (copied from 

 Wisconsin) designed to prevent these accidents. Its purpose is, first, 

 to require such an elongation of the hood over the snapping-rolls of 



1 Adapted from The Survey, XXVII (October 8, 1911), 946-50- 



