Document text
Accession no.
5623
Date received
1(20/1C/4‘;
Consignment no.
Shipped from
Waah. ()Moe
Label
Amount
4p
WPA L. C. PROJECT itti.igre UNIT
Form -3
kij.Lidalm.Collection (or Type)
PRO114LbsSMIe Wprbrs
Place of orighaliSKi..• Illinois Date t/12/52
Project workert.ty_..atirk*
Project editor
Remarks
Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE
NAME OF WORKER Betty Burke
ADDRESS 1339 S. Troy
DATE May 12, 1939
SUBJECT American Lives
Packinghouse worker
1. Date and time of interview
2. Plaoe of interview
3. Name and address of informant
4. Name and address of person, if any,
who put you in touch with informant.
May 12, 10 a.m.
FOLKLORE
CHICAGO
5529 S. Hermitage home
2nd fl.
Lil Shaw
5529 S. Hermitage
None
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
None
6. Description of room,house, surroundings, etc.
Ordinary 2 flat apt. building, in
somewhat well-to-do neighborhood, scanty, nondescript furnishings in hams,
keeps a boarder to help pay the rent. Couple of streets sway to the north
are the 'yard' slums.
(Use as many additional sheets as neoessary, for any of the forms, each bearing
the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
W3623
FORM B
Personal History of Informant
STATE
NAME OF 1NCRKER Betty Burke
ADDRESS 1339 S. Troy
DATE May 12, 1939
SUBJECT Packinghouse worker
NAME OF INFORMANT Lil Shaw
1. Ancestry
2. Place and date of birth
3. Family
4. Places lived in, with dates
5. Education, with dates
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates
Irish, American born
New York City,
About 25 years old
FOLKLORE
CHICAGO
Husband, 5 month old baby
New York, Chicago
Finished Grammar school
7. Special skills and interests PackingOcuse union, progressive
community groups, and political pressure groups to supply aid to
the workingman are her main interests.
8. Community and religious activities
No religious affiliations
9. Description of informant A hundred and seventy-five
pounds of husky Irish, fresh, cocky mariner, pretty face, hard
worker, keeps busy in various groups above mentioned practically
every
10. Other Points gained in interview
STATE
NAME OF WORKER
ADDRESS
DATE
SUBJECT
NAME OF INFORMANT
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
Betty Burke
1339 S. Troy
May 12, 1939
Packinghouse worker
Lil Shaw
FOLKLORE
CHICAGO
start with my first job in the yards, pork trimning in Swift's.
That job is in a cooler where there are no windows. It's always wet and
the girls had to wear boots, or wooden shoes, and woolen socks, and long
aprons. It's a messy job and the girls would get all bloody and wet and
greasy right away. We had to change aprons at least twice a week and the
company doesn't furnish them nor launder them for us.
Pork trimming consists of trimming fat pork from the lean. All that's
done with a knife, which you have to keep sharpening all the time because
of the wetness and then the work naturally dulls your knife soon. It's
very cold, and your hands get frozen and numbed and since it's piece work
you have to work like mad to make anything. Hundreds of girls have their
fingers all out up on account of the rush. They're always sticking each
other or themselves, accidentally, of oourse, knives slip out of their
fingers, they get so cold, or greasy and bloody, or else beoause they're
trying to make the above B rate. That's base rate. You had to earn bonus,
and go over base rate. If you don't, they fire you.
The pork, before it's trimmed, oomes in barrels of 60 pounds or more,
and we'd have to carry our barrels of meat up to the tables ourselves. The
barrel itself weighs about twenty pounds. That'd be some work, and don't
fbrget we didn't get paid for lugging them, either, we only got paid for
the meat we trimmed and had weighed. Another thing, we used
FORM D
Extra Comment
STATE
NAME OF MREER Betty Burke
ADDRESS 1339 S. Troy
DATE May 12, 1939
SUBJECT Packinghouse worker
NAME OF INFORMANT Lil Shaw
FOLKLORE
CHICAGO
to have to come to work extra early in order to get any pails to work with.
There weren't enough pan* to go around and those who didn't have any couldn't
do their work, they'd have to wait till somebody was finished with theirs, which
usually never happened, because the girls hung on to their pails, being all
piece workers they couldn't afford to sit around and wait, none of them. That
made an awful lot of trouble. Everybody was always mad at everybody else, but
it wasn't anybody's fault except the company's.
To go to lunch we had to climb two flights of stairs, the steep kind, like
fire excapes. Many times there wculd be serious accidents, women would slip
on them because they had an their rubber boots, or those wooden shoes, and break
their ankles or their legs, just all kinds of accidents.
I got laid off there. The whole gangIwas with, about 12 girls, got laid off.
We couldn't make the rate, try as we would.