• Trackwomen on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 1943. The wartime manpower shortage opened more jobs of more kinds to women than ever before. Employers hired Black women, over-35’s, and married women—3 groups previously barred from most offices and industries. About 90% of Black working women were domestics or farm workers before the war, but 18% worked in factories by war’s end, and those on farms were halved. Equal pay and promotions were decreed by new laws, but these were not fully enforced, especially for Blacks and older women. However, wages and opportunities were better than ever before. Peacetime put more than 2 million women in nontraditional jobs out of work, but most found other jobs in the postwar boom, contrary to all predictions—even their own.
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Trackwomen on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad postcard

From Women Making History: The Revolutionary Feminist Postcard Art of Helaine Victoria Press by Julia M. Allen and Jocelyn H. Cohen

  • Part of the Bread & Roses series, Women in the American Labor Movement, a set of 9 postcards. Printed letterpress in sepia with blue border and copper accent, 3 ½” x 5½”, with a special Bread & Roses emblem created as part of the design. Although Cohen and Poore preferred the large jumbo size postcards, postcard collectors generally only purchased the traditional “standard size” of 3 ½” x 5½” and, with this set, they hoped to pick up notice and recognition by the deltiology world.
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  • HISTORY / Women
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