Endicott-Johnson had a great reputation for treating workers well and building quality housing and public facilities such as libraries, parks, and golf courses.
Here's a photo of the stitching room staff in 1937. The red arrow points to Elizabeth Tomecek, the mother of Josephine from last week's post.
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| Photo by George H. Pennell, Commercial Photographer, Endicott, New York |
The photo seems to indicate that they were also manufacturing Red Cross shoes there. Red Cross was experiencing a boom at the time and may have partnered with Endicott Johnson to meet the demand. Click here to see a previous post on Red Cross shoes. If you want to know more about the history of Endicott-Johnson, there are a couple of very good sources, including a National Public Radio story from December, 2010, and a website created by Professor Gerald Zahavi of the State University of New York at Albany. Professor Zahavi promises to post additional material in the future, including oral histories.
Here's the back of the postcard.
The message reads:
Hello mama We are all feeling as usual. Gess you can read a little of it. When are you coming home.
S.C.S.
Sadly, Binghamton, Endicott, Johnson City, and surrounding areas are currently suffering through a catastrophic flood.
Be sure to wander over to Sepia Saturday for great old photos and the stories behind them.
Ah yes, from your first photo the days before the mighty cubicle - and voice mail and email and texting and twitter- to keep in touch with your fellow co-worker and others....the writing is priceless,(gess) spelled wrong but you know exactly what would it should be...like really why put a u in there? ! lol
ReplyDeleteInteresting! Looks like a big sweatshop, but I like that management was considerate and helpful for the workers. Not that golf was a must, but the other things. :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a great pair of images, occupational and family too! Factory photos/cards are wonderful micro-archives with lots of forgotten details about the workers, the mechanics. and the basic setup of early industrial processes. This stuff was never recorded in textbooks and was unique to each industry. Interesting too that the postcard was printed in Dresden, Germany. Did they sell these at the company canteen?
ReplyDeleteMike, I think there was so much community pride for this business at the time, that these cards may well have been available at the corner drug store.
ReplyDeleteAs for the printing in Dresden, it was very common at the time to have cards printed in Germany, because they were able to produce better quality cards with state-of-the-art technology. Stengel & Co, in particular, produced some beautiful art cards. This is not a great example of that quality though.
Interesting! We are often led to believe that women didn't really start working outside the home until during/after WWII. It looks to me like women had the job market cornered here:)
ReplyDeleteOh, I just noticed -- those are rows of windows??? I've always had the impression of factory workers been confined and closed off in dark cavernous buildings. No wonder Endicott stood out as a great place to work.
ReplyDeleteI see one man managed to get in the photo of those in the stitching room. It was also interesting to see that belt driven Singer sowing machine.
ReplyDeleteThe artwork on the first postcard makes it look like an idealised version of the factory, but tanneries are notoriously smelly places to work and that stitching room was probably very noisy too. Thank goodness for camaraderie.
ReplyDeleteWhat an important family "document" that photograph of the stitching room staff is. Although it appears not to have been very carefully posed, it's both pleasing to the eye and informative, in many different ways. I wonder if any of the staff from c.1915 were still there in 1937?
ReplyDeleteAmazing postcard. I wonder if they were any happier than modern people working in their cubicles.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great postcard. That's the best factory scene I've seen on a postcard. Both the photographer and the artist who colored and touched it up did an excellent job.
ReplyDeleteTo the best of my knowledge, my grandparents quite enjoyed working for E-J's. Yes, it was hard work and they expected alot from you, but at the same time it was like a big family- there were picnics, dances, celebrations and other personal perks in addition to those Christine mentioned, including a retirement pension and low interest loans to help you buy a house.
ReplyDeleteAlthough E-J's was a major force that contributed to a boom in population and prosperity, it wasn't a company town in the sense that you had to shop at the company store, etc. Binghamton's vitality as a city peaked in the mid 20th century with a population of about 100,000. As manufacturers shifted operations to the sunbelt, then later overseas, the city began a continuous decline to the current size of about 45,000, with very little industry. Many of the E-J factories are still standing, but have been vacant for years and are slowly crumbling.
A wonderful snapshot of factory life, before full mechanisation. These employers sound more progressive than most, with their social and recreational policy for staff.
ReplyDeleteInteresting background. Those sure were some hard working women. They seem to be very happy in the group photo.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I can find other similar cards or photos of factories in New Yorkin the late 1800's and early 1900's, Very interesting reading about this history. Red Cross Shoes rang a bell with me too.
ReplyDeleteLove it : it is like a postcard version of those short documentary programmes that are so popular at the moment which show you How Things Are Made or How Do They Do It and the like. In that first picture you get a real feeling of some kind of work community taking place rather than a mechanised production line.
ReplyDeleteYou can never have too many shoes! What a fascinating post. I wonder if anyone still hand-makes shoes or if they are all made by machine now.
ReplyDeleteBoth images are wonderful. I especially love the women working. It's especially nice to read that the company valued their employees. You think about the situations today with manufacturing. Replace all these faces with Chinese working for little money and horrible living conditions. Sometimes things don't change as much as we'd like.
ReplyDeleteSo fascinating to have these images knowing you haver personal ties to them.
Love the first one- I can see these for sale at the local drug store- looks like a happy workplace. My grandpa worked at a shoe factory- he always talked like he enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteThat postcard is fabulous! It dates from a time when few such factories cared to have their work areas shown.
ReplyDeleteWow, neat postcard. can you imagine sitting in those hard wood chairs all day. They were sturdier stock than I am, for sure.
ReplyDeleteNice to have a photo of the actual work place your people worked in, although I was thinking of the smell too. Tough times in those towns now with all the jobs going elsewhere.
ReplyDeletenice to see that some companies were treating people decently, setting an example.
ReplyDelete:)~
HUGZ
Before I'd even reached the part about Endicott-Johnson treating their workers well, I decided they looked very cheerful.
ReplyDeletesorry to hear about the floods.
Seems that every woman hav the same hair style.
ReplyDeleteI adore these worker/factory postcards, just found one showing quitting time in Dayton. Will post soon.
ReplyDeleteLay Hoon,
ReplyDeleteYou're so right. I wonder if it was the fashion or if it was the only hairstyle that ensure the hair wouldn't get caught in the sewing machines.
I lived on North Street (near Seward) about 1937-38
ReplyDeleteand played with George Pennell's daughter Jeannie.
Does anyone know if she's still alive? Or any of the
Dodge Powell children? My Dad rented an apartment
from Mr. Leadbetter before moving to an apartment
complex (closer to Main Street) where the Klotz and
Bruger's lived.
Larry Bursch - San Jose, CA.
larrybursch@att.net
Oh please...make no mistake about it....the conditions at EJ factories are only marginally better than other sweatshops at the time. And far WORSE than today. People were happy just to have ANY job back then, and the Binghamton area stupidly put all their eggs in one basket with EJ so they took what they got and were glad to have it.
ReplyDeleteFunny how people like to remember things as better than they were. First off...yes, there were windows in the factory. PAINTED BLACK so as not to distract the workers. That just wouldn't make for a nice postcard, now, would it? And yes, they did do a lot of things like build parks, etc. To distract the workers from that fact that they were working extremely hard for very low pay. The would bring over the poorest of families from Europe because they would be happy for whatever they got.
ReplyDeleteThere is also a reason why most children of EJ workers did NOT work for EJ when they grew up.
My father worked for IBM and in 1967 transferred to Rochester, MN. The next year, when I turned 18, I came back to Endicott. A girlfriend and I whet to EJ to apply for a job. Pay was the worst (by piece) and I was warned by one older woman to watch out for another, that she was crazy and stole others work. I couldn't get out of that building fast enough. Men whistled at us out the windows as we were leaving. While I remember the carousel, band stand and swimming pool at EnJoy (sic) park, working there would have not been a picnic.
ReplyDelete