Posts Tagged Labor

Photo Credit: Lewis Hine/Works Progress Administration (National Archives)

Frederick and Dimmock spinning glass wool at a factory in Millville, New Jersey on March 26, 1937.

Photo Credit: Grand Canyon NPS

Grand Canyon forest ranger Warren Hamilton and Marv Adams, a maintenance worker, cut down trees to produce a fire line on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, circa 1934.

Photo Credit: Lewis Hine/Works Progress Administration (National Archives)

Woman draping stockings at the Minnesac Mills in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1936.

Photo Credit: National Archives

“Women assembling dolls on a long worktable at the Shrenhat Toy Company, Philadelphia, Oct. 1912.”

(Photo Credit: National Postal Museum, Curatorial Photographic Collection)

An unidentified group of American military censors at work in an unidentified location during the First World War. During this conflict, the US military began its first large-scale censorship of troop mail. Censors were on the alert for anything that might aid the enemy. References that were almost certain to be cut or blacked out were those to troop locations and movements.

National Postal Museum

Photo Credit: Library of Congress

“I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people. I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false. But this knowledge does not outweigh the fact that my class, the working class, is exploited, driven, fought back with the weapon of starvation, with guns and with venal courts whenever they strike for conditions more human, more civilized for their children, and for their children’s children.”

- Mary Harris Jones, also known as Mother Jones, labor and community organizer

Robot arms assemble truck bodies in the fully automated Ford Motor Company truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, in 2009. (Car Culture/Corbis)

On January 15, 1979, Robert Williams found his way into the history books in a fatally odd way. While working in a Flat Rock, Michigan casting plant for Ford Motors, Williams was killed by a robot. The 25-year-old assembly line worker is the first recorded human death by robot.

As Williams was gathering parts in a storage facility, aside other workers and robots, one of the robot’s arms slammed into him. He died instantly from the powerful hit to the head. Williams’ family sued and the jury sided with the family. They awarded damages in the tune of $10 million since they agreed that, if better safety measures were enforced, the accident could have been averted.

Photo & Source via Wired.com

Side Note: On the subject of robots….

Unemployment affects more than just humans…

I couldn’t help myself, it’s a character flaw.

Norma Jeane Dougherty, June 26, 1945. Photo Credit: David Conover/Immortal Marilyn

Norma Jeane Dougherty, June 26, 1945. Photo Credit: David Conover/Immortal Marilyn

Before she was Marilyn Monroe, a platinum blonde with her dress billowing over a subway grate, Norma Jean Mortenson worked as a “riveter” or a female war worker. When she was sixteen-years-old, Norma Jean married James Dougherty, who joined the Merchant Marines during the Second World War. Traveling to California, Norma Jean got a job as a munitions factory worker at Radioplane Corp. in Van Nuys, California, a company that built small remote-controlled aircraft used in military practice.

On June 26, 1945, Capt. Ronald Reagan of the U.S. Army’s 1st Motion Picture Unit (yes, Reagan – as in the future President Reagan) ordered army photographer David Conover to photograph women war workers. Conover later wrote about his experience meeting Norma Jean.

I moved down the assembly line, taking shots of the most attractive employees. None was especially out of the ordinary. I came to a pretty girl putting on propellers and raised the camera to my eye. She had curly ash blond hair and her face was smudged with dirt. I snapped her picture and walked on. Then I stopped, stunned. She was beautiful. Half child, half woman, her eyes held something that touched and intrigued me.

Monroe with Conover on the set of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” in 1952. Photo Credit: Immortal Marilyn

Yank, a weekly magazine published by the military during the war years, published Conover’s photographs, thus starting Norma Jean’s modeling career.

After the photos were published, Emmeline Snively represented the young worker and encouraged her to dye her hair platinum blonde. In 1946, Norma Jean divorced her husband, stating that he opposed her artistic career. As her modeling career flourished, she soon turned to film and became the iconic Marilyn Monroe.

One could say that President Ronald Reagan indirectly discovered Marilyn Monroe…

While working at Radioplane Corp., she wrote the following letter:

California, June 15, 1944

Dearest Grace,

I was so happy to hear from you. I was so thrilled to read your letter and learn of all that you have been doing lately.

I will send you your picture very shortly now, I’m going down Saturday to find out more about it. Also will send you lots of snap shots at the same time I send you the picture. I found out that a 10″ x 12″ (that was the size you wanted, wasn’t it ?) costs exactly $ 5.00.

[...]

I am working 10 hrs. a day at Radioplane Co., at Metropolitain airport. I am saving almost everything I earn (to help pay for our future home after the war). The work isn’t easy at all for I am on my feet all day and walking quite a bit. I was all set to get a Civil Service Job with the army, all my papers filled out and everything set to go, and then I found out I would be working with all army fellows.

I was over there one day, there are just too many wolves to be working with, there are enough of those at Radioplane Co. without a whole army full of them. The Personal Officer said that he would hire me but that he wouldn’t advice it for my own sake, so I am back at Radioplane Co. partly contented.

Well I guess that is about all for now.

With much love,

Norma Jeane

Sources
Immortal Marilyn
Hargrave: Aviation & Aeromodelling 

In this photograph . . . soldiers are shown digging a trench, viewed between strands of barbed wire. The men have only dug to about knee level and are very exposed, so it seems probable that they were not within sight of enemy trenches. Nearer the front line, trench digging was done under cover of night.

Barbed wire was used by both sides as a deterrent to slow an enemy attack as it approached the front of the trenches. It had been invented in 1873 in America as cattle fencing, but its nickname there seems even more apt to its use in warfare. It was called ‘The Devil’s Rope’.

(via the-seed-of-europe; source National Library of Scotland)

“Soda jerker flipping ice cream into malted milk shakes. Corpus Christi, Texas.”

When I look at this photograph by Russell Lee, it seems stir in me both hunger pangs and a sense of longing. The hunger pangs part I completely understand since I am a notorious, and self-proclaimed, ice cream addict, but the sense of longing is new for me. Perhaps I am becoming a bit nostalgic as I age, which, to be honest is a bit laughable since I am only halfway through my twenties. Maybe the longing is the fact that the only “soda jerker” I know are those at Dairy Queen or Cold Stone Creamery. Or that many people of my generation don’t know what the word ”malt” means. As much as I enjoy my modern-day conveniences, advancements and Ben & Jerry’s, I can’t help thinking that it would be interesting to have experienced some of those “Good Old Days” things.

Photo via Library of Congress

Wonder Women: 1942

August 1942. “Formerly a sociology major at the University of Southern California, Mrs. Eloise J. Ellis (left) now “keeps ‘em flyin’” at the Naval Air Base, Corpus Christi, Texas. She is a supervisor under civil service in the Assembly and Repair Department. It is her job to maintain morale among the women by helping them solve housing and other personal problems. With her is Jo Ann Whittington, an NYA trainee at the plant.” Large format Kodachrome transparency by Howard Hollem for the Office of War Information.

Shorpy Historical Photo Archive

By an unknown photographer, unknown location, December 22, 1943

“A Bell System switchboard where overseas calls are handled. Not all of the services shown here are available under wartime conditions”

The most famous female worker of World War II was the mythical Rosie the Riveter, who patriotically joined the industrial workforce to do her bit in a shipyard or an aircraft factory. There were many real-life Rosies, but many more women worked in service or clerical jobs as secretaries, bank tellers, retail clerks, and telephone operators.

(National Archives, Records of the Women’s Bureau (86-WWT-28-3))

By an unknown photographer, unknown location, ca. 1949

Early in the 20th century, Pullman Palace Car employed more African Americans than any other company in the United States. Most held jobs as sleeping car porters, caring for mostly white railroad passengers. Porters worked long hours with little rest, but they were well paid compared to other African Americans. In 1937, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters became the first African American union to win a labor agreement. Its members often became community leaders and civil rights activists.

(National Archives, Records of the U.S. Information Agency (306-PS-49-1148))

With some of New York’s skyscrapers looming through clouds of gas, some U.S. army nurses at the hospital post at Fort Jay, Governors Island, New York, wear gas masks as they drill on defense precautions, on November 27, 1941. (AP Photo)

(AP Photo/Source: The Atlantic)