Celebrating American workers

May 8th, 2007 by Julie Ferguson

U.S. Steel - female workersThe website for National Archives is a national treasure. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the Government agency that preserves and maintains important historical materials and makes them available for research or public access. Many records have been digitized and the site has an extensive array of exhibits that range from the educational to the entertaining.
One that we chanced on recently that may be of some interest to readers of this blog is The Way We Worked. This is an extensive exhibit, primarily photographic, that offers a glimpse of American workplaces spanning the mid 19th to the late 20th centuries. The exhibit graphically depicts how the nature of the work that we do has changed and offers this commentary:

… In 1870 only a handful of factories employed over 500 workers. By 1900, 1,063 factories employed between 500 and 1,000 people. During the first half of the 20th century, many African American women worked as domestics in private homes, but during World War II, they took advantage of new opportunities at shipyards and factories.
By the end of the 20th century, a dramatic shift took place, sending individuals who had worked in factories, plants, and mills into jobs in offices, stores, and restaurants.

The site has exhibits on what people wore to work and what tools they used. Also, in a section about “conflict at work” there are photos focusing on labor issues. The section that attracted our attention is a compilation of photos on dangerous or unhealthful work. Each of the photos are captioned and offer interesting commentary. The photo of the women that we’ve used in this post depicts workers at U.S. Steel’s Gary, Indiana Works, taken sometime between 1941 and 1945. The caption refers to the workers as “top women” and states that, “Their job is to clean up at regular intervals around the tops of twelve blast furnaces. As a safety precaution, the girls wear oxygen masks while they are doing the clean-up job.”
The photos are also available for purchase in book form and can be viewed at the following locations in a traveling exhibit:

  • Morrow, GA., March 10 – May 20, 2007
    –National Archives and Records Administration – Southeast Regional Archives

  • Kansas City, MO. , June 9 – August 19, 2007
    –Kansas City Public Library

  • Ocala, FL., September 8 – December 18, 2007
    –Central Florida Community College
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