Women packaging Red Mill cheese in a Minneapolis factory, October 14, 1937. Photograph by the Minneapolis Star and Tribune.

Strutwear Knitting Company employees at the firm’s Minneapolis factory, ca. 1936. Photo by Philip C. Dittes.

Packing chocolates at Griggs, Cooper & Company in St. Paul, ca. 1932.

Women workers at Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company (2854 Minnehaha Avenue, Minneapolis), ca. 1917.

United War Work Campaign poster. Lithograph by Adolph Treidler for the American Lithographic Company, ca. 1917–1918.

Employees of the food wholesaler Griggs, Cooper & Company (probably its candy division) in Lowertown St. Paul, ca. 1910s. From the collection of Harold Rutstein; used with permission.

Employees of Sanitary Foods in St. Paul during a break from work, ca. 1916.

Women working at Hamm’s Brewery in St. Paul, ca. 1904.

Women at work in a Minneapolis macaroni factory, 1892.

Postcard advertising the Cascade Steam Laundry in Minneapolis, ca. 1885-1890. The undercover reporting of Eva McDonald (pseudonym Eva Gay) in 1886 revealed that working conditions at the Cascade Laundry did not match this public image. “It looked more like a rat hole than a place where women were forced to work,” she wrote in the St. Paul Globe in that year. “The steam, darkness, heat and smell from dirty clothing made a disgusting combination…Such a work room is a disgrace to humanity.”