She's been working on the railroad

July 18, 2016 5:40 AM

World War II Railroad Women In April 1943, Office of War Information photographer Jack Delano photographed the women of the Chicago & North Western Railroad roundhouse in Clinton, Iowa.
posted by pjern (9 comments total)

These photos are delightful, thank you! I am partial to the shots of the lunch table and of Mrs. Viola Sievers, steam queen. And oh, those goggles--!
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:54 AM on July 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

These are great.

Though it's weird how they went right back to being all frail and unemployable and stuff as soon as the war ended. Women!
posted by pracowity at 6:21 AM on July 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

"Frail" is not a word I would typically use to describe Iowa women, to be honest.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:53 AM on July 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Oh, these are so great. I really liked that shot at the lunch table, too. It's interesting to think about how it was possible to ramp up women's participation in the workforce during WWII and then the subsequent retreat in the 1950s (which was only ever partial but still very real). Perceptions seem so malleable, and when there's a structural need for [insert disenfranchised class] it happens, but when it isn't or no longer is in the interests of the capitalist class that can evaporate.
posted by drlith at 7:23 AM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

I also wonder if part of it is what gets counted as work and what doesn't. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those women had always been doing economically productive stuff on family farms or in family businesses, but they were considered farm wives, rather than farmers.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:53 AM on July 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I also wonder if part of it is what gets counted as work and what doesn't. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those women had always been doing economically productive stuff on family farms or in family businesses, but they were considered farm wives, rather than farmers.

I think this is definitely the case.

Sort of an aside: Census has released 'representative' micro-samples of individual data for past years which are available (via IPUMS for instance) for researchers. It's really invaluable, for example, if you want to do quantitative analysis on the US prior to the 1940s and 50s when the government really ramped up and standardized construction of data. What's interesting (and maddening) is looking what at information the Census gathered changed over time. It's been a few years but for some of the late 19th century data, there are just no occupations listed for women in the microsample. Women were surely working, but it looks like nobody bothered to ask them what they were doing. Similarly, in the 1850 census there's not much individual data on African Americans living in the South; they had the raw numbers but didn't get any information about them (so, the publicly available sample of micro-data is not actually representative of the population living there at the time).

Anyway, a slight tangent. Nice post pjern!
posted by dismas at 8:12 AM on July 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Outstanding post.

I noticed that every woman that was listed was listed as a Mrs. some as a mother of x.

Working with steam and working on the railroad (Dinah aside) in general is an easy way to get yourself maimed or killed.

So your husband goes off to war, you have kids at home, and you react this way to the call to overall up, wear whatever shoes you have and head to the roundhouse to work on trains? With nail polish on? That grittiness is really difficult to quantify.

I'm not crying, you're crying.
posted by Sphinx at 8:41 AM on July 18, 2016 [5 favorites]

Shorpy also has SO MANY wonderful Jack Delano photos (including ones from the Mashable piece). I have a copy of this one (“Mildred Williams, one of several women freight handlers employed at the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe depot.”) hanging in my office. It helps keep me strong on bad days.
posted by mon-ma-tron at 8:49 PM on July 18, 2016

I absolutely love these women!
posted by stripesandplaid at 11:39 AM on July 19, 2016