Edith Daley American Can Company article

Coverall Clad Can Co. Girls Run Machinery

by Edith Daley

August 6, 1918 San Jose Evening News

“Come on, folks, let’s go!”

This is no balloon route excursion or blossom trolley trip. It is a little journey to the genesis of the tin can. In sparsely settled regions east of the Rocky mountains the tin can is extensively used as a flower-pot in which to sprout sickly geraniums. It is universally used as an adornment for the automobile of newly-weds. In that immortal cartoon, “there ain’t no hell”, a tin can is tied to a dog’s tail. It remained for California to elevate the tin can to its highest dignity as a container. California has.

The American Can company is historically, geographically and economically important. It is the first port of call in a summer sea of fruit. It is to the Santa Clara Valley what a munitions plant is to war. To the individual cannery what a first aid station is to a wounded soldier.

A gigantic hive of industry, the buzz of it gives a first impression of tremendous, well directed energy. Hum and buss and roar; clatter and whirr and bang! A chorus of incoherence accompanying progress!

Cans, cans, cans - big and little cans, fat ones and thin ones! All primitive products-without their war-paint on- just plain undecorated tin cans- about 600,000 of them every day - every day in the year! The plant could do more than that, for its capacity is about 900,000!

Two things are arresting: a throb at the heart of the industry that tells of steadily pulsing business, and the unusual sight of row and rows of women in coveralls “manning” the machinery. There are not three or four or half a dozen. About 200 on the day shift and 150 until 11:45 at night, when a last rush of energy sends them on a run for the last car.

Sensibly dressed, alert, careful, they handle nearly every machine formerly run by the men. It is said that they do not turn out as much work as the men-for which there may be two reasons. They are not doing “piece work” which is a great incentive to “speed up” production. The other reason is that their “boss” is a man! No mere foreman in charge of a lot of coveralled women can drive them by the use of well, punctuated, uncensored United States as he could a bunch of men. At least it isn’t being done in the best can factories. The girls would simply take their little tin dishes and boudoir caps (yes, there are all kinds of caps) and go home-so there! And what would the American Can company “do then, poor thing?”

All joking aside, the “women do the work, and do it well. From the first appearance of the sheets of tin, through the entire process of cutting the sheets into strips, the strips into different sizes, the shaping and joining to the machine that closes the bottom of the can and another that makes the top-even to the placing of a paper gasket under the cap, the girls are on the job every minute.

“Many accidents this year?” To which the foreman replied, laconically, “No-not many fingers cut off this year.” Ugh! The company is well equipped for first aid, with a nurse in constant attendance. There is a room where lunches from home may be eaten and a restaurant for those desiring a hot meal.

The plant is modern, well lighted, splendidly ventilated. The employees are a cheerful looking, well paid lot of girls and the comfort of their accident averting working clothes is a revelation.

This matter of “industrial garments” was no sudden change nor is it any longer peculiar to the American Can company’s employees. “They” are being worn by those in a tranquil state of domestication and in the Vere-de-Vere households of the very best families. The jump from ruffles to real working clothes was like Rome-not “made in a day”. It came after hard cross-country riding over hurdles of public opinion and thorn hedges of custom-made feminism.

From the ladylike stone jars of the pickling and preserving days of grandmother’s time to the enormous output of the American Can company is not so surprising a change as the transition from hoops and hobbies to the war time efficiency of the comfortable coverall.

The wearers are no longer self-conscious about their bi-furcated garments, which means that where machinery throbs and whirrs women have not only taken the places of the “boys over there”- they have slipped into their clothes-to stay!