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Extension Reading #1
Life in the Canneries
The excerpt below is from an historical document published in 1911 by
the US Bureau of Labor. The article reports on an investigation of
working conditions in a Baltimore cannery. It tells about the long
hours, harsh conditions, and low wages faced by women tomato skinners.
By telling the public about these terrible working conditions, the
Bureau of Labor hoped the conditions would improve.
In this plant, the place where the tomato skinners worked was a
shed-like part of the building on the waterfront, having one side
entirely exposed. In dry weather, this feature has an element of
comfort, for the workers get much air, though it is tainted by the
odors arising from the harbor. In wet weather, the workers were
entirely unprotected. Those nearest the outside side of the shed get
thoroughly wet. As the shed itself leaks, the workers even on the
inside farthest removed from the open waterfront, suffered no little
discomfort... In cases of chilly weather, the discomfort must reach a
danger point, apparently, for there is no provision for reducing the
exposure.
The vat for steaming tomatoes was in the same shed and kept the women
and children in a cloud of hot humidity. The floor was covered with a
slippery mixture of tomato pulp and skins. Some of the women and
children wore rubber boots as they stood at their skinning troughs,
some were barefooted, and others wore coarse shoes. The skirts of all
the workers were wet, some of them up to the knees...
Men brought supplies of tomatoes form the vats to the skinning tables,
but the women and the children carried the 40 pound buckets of skinned
tomatoes over the reeking and slippery floor from the skinning shed
into the room where the product is weighed, canned, and cooked...
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