Cutting Mixed Pickles in Studio

ca. 1905

unknown

More than 1,000 women worked at the H.J. Heinz Company Main Plant in Allegheny City in 1902. Over half, about 56 percent, of the plant’s workers were women. Some of their responsibilities included washing bottles, cutting up chickens, trimming meat, stuffing olives, skinning tomatoes, peeling and stoning peaches, and cutting the eyes out of potatoes. Women who started working at the plant at age fourteen were paid only half the wage paid to boys of the same age for doing the same work. For example, women who packed crackers were paid $.50 for a ten-hour day, while unskilled men laborers whose jobs were to fetch and carry were paid between $1.30 and $1.65 for the same ten-hour day.

H.J. Heinz Company.;H.J. Heinz Company (Pittsburgh, Pa.)--Employees.;Food industry and trade--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.;Food industry and trade--Employees--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.;Employment--Women--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.;Pickles.

MSP57.B007.I05

H.J. Heinz Company, Photographs, 1864-1991, MSP 57, Library and Archives Division, Senator John Heinz History Center

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