Women | Page 5 | MNopedia

Women working at Griggs, Cooper & Company

Packing chocolates at Griggs, Cooper & Company in St. Paul, ca. 1932.

Women workers at Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company

Women workers at Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company (2854 Minnehaha Avenue, Minneapolis), ca. 1917.

United War Work Campaign poster

United War Work Campaign poster. Lithograph by Adolph Treidler for the American Lithographic Company, ca. 1917–1918.

Women at work at Griggs, Cooper & Company

Employees of the food wholesaler Griggs, Cooper & Company (probably its candy division) in Lowertown St. Paul, ca. 1910s. From the collection of Harold Rutstein; used with permission.

Sanitary Foods employees during a break

Employees of Sanitary Foods in St. Paul during a break from work, ca. 1916.

Women working at Hamm’s Brewery

Women working at Hamm’s Brewery in St. Paul, ca. 1904.

Women at work in a Minneapolis macaroni factory

Women at work in a Minneapolis macaroni factory, 1892.

Cascade Steam Laundry postcard

Postcard advertising the Cascade Steam Laundry in Minneapolis, ca. 1885-1890. The undercover reporting of Eva McDonald (pseudonym Eva Gay) in 1886 revealed that working conditions at the Cascade Laundry did not match this public image. “It looked more like a rat hole than a place where women were forced to work,” she wrote in the St. Paul Globe in that year. “The steam, darkness, heat and smell from dirty clothing made a disgusting combination…Such a work room is a disgrace to humanity.”

Women Industrial Workers in the Twin Cities, 1860s–1945

For women to earn wage income in the 1800s, they first had to overcome the conventional, and often legal, strictures that led to the saying, “a woman’s place is in the home.” In the early twentieth century, technological and economic change—as well as two world wars—transformed the industrial workplace, and much of daily life. In Minnesota and throughout the US, the women’s suffrage movement overlapped with these changes and helped the campaign for economic and social equality, including the right to work.

Henrietta Barclay Paist

Henrietta Barclay Paist between 1910 and 1915.

Gale Family Library