Abstract
In the introduction, Olsson highlights how the management of the Northwestern Knitting Company, later Munsingwear Inc., strongly supported the US declaration of war on Germany in April 1917 and identified the company’s production of Munsing Wear for the soldiers as part of the war effort at “Camp Munsingwear.” The company management supported the efforts of the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety (a Watchdog of Loyalty) to secure the loyalty to the war effort of every employee regardless of national background. The activities of the Women’s Commission that was established to handle “the problem of women in industry,” when so many men were drafted for war, are highlighted. The survey here of gainfully employed women in Minnesota in 1918 is an extraordinarily rich source for the study.
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Notes
- 1.
Munsingwear News , May 1917, p. 2.
- 2.
Munsingwear News , May 1917, p. 5.
- 3.
See for instance Maurine W. Greenwald, Women, War, and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women’s Work in the United States, Westport, 1980, pp. 21ff.
- 4.
Oral information to author.
- 5.
Northwestern Knitting Company, Secretary’s Book 1910–July 1919, p. 198. Munsingwear Inc., Records, Box 30, Location 148.C.14.1 (B), MHS.
- 6.
Munsingwear News , May 1919, p. 6.
- 7.
On Agnes Peterson , see Mary Anderson, Woman at Work: The Autobiography of Mary Anderson as Told to Mary N. Winslow, Minneapolis, 1951, pp. 110, 215–216. Agnes Peterson was born of Swedish immigrants in St. Peter, Minnesota. She was director of the Bureau of Women and Children at the Minnesota Department of Labor, 1911–1918, and she was active in the “framing and enactment of legislation; investigation of conditions of employment and enforcing of laws affecting women and children.” Later she became assistant director of the Woman’s Bureau at the United States Department of Labor, where she served as industrial supervisor 1918–1921. She was a member of the National Women’s Trade Union League and many other associations. See Who’s Who: Minnesota Women, 1924.
- 8.
Women’s Committee, Correspondence and Subject Files, Women in Industry. Minnesota Commission of Public Safety . Location 103.K.7.13B, MHC.
- 9.
Women in Industry in Minnesota in 1918, Minneapolis, 1920, pp. 3f.
- 10.
Women in Industry in Minnesota in 1918, p. 6.
- 11.
Minnesota Commission of Public Safety. Women’s Committee. Women in Industry Survey Forms, 1918–1919. Microfilm SAM 222, MHS.
- 12.
Women in Industry in Minnesota in 1918, pp. 7–12 and 35.
- 13.
Reports of Work May–July 1918 and Bulletin August–October 1918, Minnesota Women’s Committee, Council of National Defense and Commission of Public Safety, Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, Main files, Location 103.L.7.6F Box 3, F 56. MHS.
- 14.
May Rogers Lane, Women and Girls Employed Outside of the Home, p. 79, Survey 1919, Vol. 2, Special Studies, Minneapolis Young Women’s Christian Association , Records, Box 10, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota . Another 3000 women worked, according to Miss Lane, as teachers, nurses, physicians, and employees in public service.
- 15.
June Drenning Holmquist (ed.), They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State’s Ethnic Groups, St. Paul, 1981.
- 16.
Finland was established as an independent state in December 1917, and Poland was re-established as a state after the war, so in 1918 the Polish women were still subjects of Germany , Austria, or Russia.
- 17.
Mildred L. Hartsough, The Development of the Twin Cities as a Metropolitan Market, Minneapolis, 1925, pp. 51, 54.
- 18.
Kirk Jeffrey, “The Major Manufacturers: From Food and Forest Products to High Technology,” in Clifford E. Clark (ed.), Minnesota in a Century of Change: The State and Its People Since 1900, St. Paul, 1989, p. 231. In her book In the Mood for Munsingwear: Minnesota’s Claim to Underwear Fame, St. Paul, 2011, Susan Marks focuses on the garments.
- 19.
Clarence Tolg, Minneapolis: The Market of the Northwest, Minneapolis, 1923.
- 20.
Elizabeth Faue , Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915–1945, Chapel Hill, 1991, p. 1.
- 21.
Elizabeth Faue , Writing the Wrongs. Eva Valesh and the Rise of Labor Journalism. Ithaca 2002. Eva McDonald was married to Frank Valesh in 1891.
- 22.
Terry Swanson, “The Munsingwear Family : Women at Work in the Factory—A Unique Perspective,” unpublished paper. History 8347, University of Minnesota , 1996.
- 23.
The new name was resolved at a special stockholders’ meeting on December 18, 1918. Northwestern Knitting Company, Secretary’s Record Book December 1919–December 1925, p. 4, Munsingwear Inc., Records, Box 30, Location 148.C.14.1 (B), MHS.
- 24.
Chrislock, 1991, pp. 18ff.
- 25.
David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society, New York and Oxford 1980, passim but especially pp. 31, 36, 54, and 67.
- 26.
Chrislock, 1991, pp. 22–23.
- 27.
Chrislock, 1991, pp. 40 and 21.
- 28.
Jimmy Engren , Railroading and Labor Migration: Class and Ethnicity in Expanding Capitalism in Northern Minnesota, the 1880s to the mid 1920s, Växjö, 2007, especially Chapter 10.
- 29.
Chrislock, 1991, p. 41f.
- 30.
Gieske, Millard L., Minnesota Farmer-Laborism: The Third Party Alternative, Minneapolis 1979, p. 23.
- 31.
William Millikan, “Defenders of Business: The Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association Versus Labor During W.W.I,” Minnesota History, Spring 1986, Vol. 50: 1, p. 5. Chrislock, 1991, pp. Xf, 21, 77, and 86; William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor , 1903–1947, St. Paul, 2001, pp. 102ff; Engren, 2007, ch. 10.
- 32.
Quotation from Chrislock, 1991, pp. 55f.; and Millikan, 1986, p. 6.
- 33.
Nord, 1986, p. 146; Chrislock, p. 77.
- 34.
Chrislock, 1991, pp. ixf.
- 35.
Millikan, 1986, p. 5.
- 36.
Gieske, 1979, p. 25; Chrislock, 1991, p. 59, 277. Quotation in Chrislock, p. 277.
- 37.
Chrislock, 1991, pp. 107f, 227 and 229ff.
- 38.
Chrislock, 1991, pp. 234f and 243.
- 39.
Chrislock, 1991, pp. 234f.
- 40.
Chrislock, 1991, pp. 236f and 247.
- 41.
Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, Papers, Main files, Box 7, F 97, Location 103.L.8.1B, MHS.
- 42.
The collection of the wage information was initiated by Mary Anderson, director of the Women’s Bureau of the United States Department of Labor. Second Biennial Report of the Minimum Wage Commission , April 1, 1918–January 15, 1921, p. 9.
- 43.
Minneapolis Young Women’s Christian Association, Records, Box 10, Survey 1919, Vol. 1 “Summary of the findings of the survey,” The Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota .
- 44.
The Success of Well Doing, Minneapolis, 1921, Munsingwear Inc., Records, Box 1, Location 148.G.10.9B, MHS.
- 45.
Oral History Project, 1975: Myrtle Harris , MHS.
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Olsson, L. (2018). Introduction. In: Women's Work and Politics in WWI America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90215-9_1
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