Women Dominate the Ethnic White Cannery Labor Force Pre-WWII

Title

Women Dominate the Ethnic White Cannery Labor Force Pre-WWII

Description

Canneries are labor-intensive operations, and the labor force required to serve this expanding industry grew with the increase of orchards under production. Jobs were clearly divided along gender, ethnic, and racial lines. Chinese men, Mexican Californio women and men, and Anglo men and women filled the first cannery jobs when the canneries during the 1870s and 1880s. Following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish immigrants soon dominated the Santa Clara County cannery labor force into WWII.

By the 1930s, Santa Clara County’s 38 canneries were the largest employers of women in California. Historian Glenna Matthews divides these canneries into three categories: the large corporate canners of Libby’s, Hunt’s, or Calpak; the smaller joint firms such as Richmond-Chase (2,073 peak season workers); and the marginal single canneries, including Garden City Canning Company (197 peak season workers).

In the 1930s, white ethnic women had risen to supervisory positions as floor ladies, with full authority over subordinates. During WWII, many of these women moved to better paying positions in defense industries and jobs vacated by men. By the mid-1940s, the percentage of women in the American workforce had expanded from 25 to 36 percent. With the wartime labor shortages, more Mexican women were recruited to work in the canneries.

Scholar Talk

https://vimeo.com/812986246

Additional Online Information

Cannery Life: Del Monte in the Santa Clara Valley - History of San José

Looking Back: Canning in the Valley of Heart's Delight | San Jose Public Library

Cannery Tour | Campbell Museum

Santa Clara Valley Women Cannery Workers

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic Three: Slide 003