Dirty Jobs

Text

“We made piston rings…some of them went to companies that made ship motors and some of them was just like a finger ring.”

“You just had a certain time to come in. And you had a certain time for lunch, and to leave, and you didn’t have no spare time. And —when you entered that door, you can expect to be busy until you went out it.”

“Sometimes the metal was hot and would come out where you breathe. All that dust from that black, you had all that black around you — it was just a dirty job to put it plain.”

“Most of [the men] were nice and some of them resented the women. They just let you know that they didn’t respect you. And I got as bad as they was — if they had any bad thing I marked it up against them.”

“After a while you get tired of the same thing, and too it was dirty work. You’d come out and it would be all around your face. You would breathe that dust and it meant you had to change uniforms every day because you had that black dust from that metal.”

Editor's Note: In 1944, Faye Edwards worked in an American Hammered Piston Ring factory, which made piston rings used primarily for motors during World War II. During her time in the factory, Edwards worked mostly with other women.