Three Scrapbooks.
Typson, Emily Valentine. Scrapbooks with a focus on women in industry during the Second World War. 1920-46.
3 volumes, folio. String bound scrapbooks, skiver covered boards blocked in blind. 58, 96, and 34 pages. Only the mildest rubbing to boards. Excellent condition.
A detailed and evocative set of scrapbooks chronicling a young American woman’s life during the late 1920s, 30s, and early 40s, with a particular emphasis on her role as a shipbuilder and aircraft assembler during the Second World War.
Compiler Emily Valentine Tyson grew up in Columbus, North Dakota, and in the first volume of her scrapbook, labelled “grade school to 1940 [when she was about 29 years old]”, she has preserved hundreds of objects that reflect her personality and the zeitgeist of the 1920s and 30s. Tyson was an outgoing and conscientious student, a member of the honour roll who enjoyed school and had an active and varied social life. In the scrapbook she includes report cards and honours certificates as well as numerous clippings from her high school newspaper, The Columbian, of which she was editor-in-chief in 1928 and 1929. The scrapbook is filled with memories of social events, including calling and greeting cards, dance cards, fabric swatches from dresses made for special occasions, seating cards for dinner parties, programmes, theatre and dance hall tickets, train tickets, letters and notes from friends, bridge score cards, and colourful ephemera from restaurants, shops, hotels, and cocktail bars. In many cases she has added neat, hand-written notes explaining the items’ origins and commenting on the experiences. Tyson filled some pages with extensive lists - two of “Songs and Memories” that together list 72 songs she enjoyed, and one of “High School Favourites” which includes her preferred actors and actresses, dance, colour, perfume, foods, book, gem, animal, flower, and others, together with descriptions of her “ideal man” and “ideal woman”. Tyson didn’t just save paper ephemera. She has also filled the book with three-dimensional pieces: a pink and green cocktail umbrella, an arrowhead, a sacred heart of Jesus medal, dried flowers, a button that says “shake that thing”, a souvenir spoon from Winnipeg, a small metal notebook with a pencil holder in which she recorded dance partners during 1935 and 36, ten wooden french fry forks, pennants, and two disposable paper spoons used to eat ices which she has carefully annotated, one reading “Keen time, bed at 7 am”. Two full pages are devoted to her 1934 trip with her girlfriends to the Century of Progress exhibition in Chicago. Tyson kept her Greyhound ticket; a card from “Happy’s Sandwich Shoppe” where they “ate lunch going to Chicago & supper coming back”; a card for a private car hire service which she has annotated with “But we saw Chicago our own way!!”; a letter to her mother on Hotel Morrison (”The World’s Tallest Hotel”) stationery; a pamphlet of “Interesting Facts about the Sky-Ride”; a souvenir photograph of herself and a friend at the “Egyptian Bazaar” in the Century of Progress – the two women each have a fez on their head and Tyson’s friend sits atop a fake camel; four small souvenir photograph pins in gilt plastic frames, and a stylish Art Deco Century of Progress metal bookmark.
During 1929 and 1930 Tyson attended the State Teacher’s College in Minot, North Dakota and later moved to Troy Montana, where she became a teacher. The second volume of the scrapbook begins with ephemera from her teaching career and life in Troy: her 1941 membership card for the Montana Education Association, a Red Cross first aid certification, a newspaper clipping about the Troy High School basketball team, programmes for meetings of the Troy Woman’s Club, and a Wendell Wilkie campaign button. But on the second set of pages, alongside her train ticket for the 1941 Christmas holidays, she has pasted a newspaper clipping “To Hell with the Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover”, which argues for a more assertive attitude toward the war, and what was probably her first ration book, issued on May 5, 1942. And while a number of pages in this volume are devoted to more typical items such as flyers, cocktail bar napkins, cards, and train tickets (many related to trips to California), the last half, 52 pages, is devoted to her new job at Portland’s Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation, which was ramping up production of Liberty and Victory class cargo ships and hiring hundreds of women to work in formerly male-dominated positions. Tyson was clearly proud of her role as a woman construction worker in the shipyard and her contribution to the war effort. She pastes in many news clippings about the activities at “Oregon Ship”, particularly pieces from the shipyard’s newsletter “The Bo’s’n’s Whistle”. These include news and photographs of the construction of the shipyard itself and the progress on specific ships such as the Star of Oregon, the US’s first Liberty Ship. Other topics include the explosion that sank the OSC’s S. S. Quinault Victory, information about how ships are constructed, visits by celebrities like red Skelton and dignitaries including President Franklin Roosevelt, employee humour and gripes, and activities such as dances, picnics, and community service, as well as the dramatic fire of 1944 which left the shipyard’s administration building a smouldering ruin and the rebuilding effort which saw it replaced in only ten weeks. Most significantly, however, are the numerous clippings and comics related to the experiences of the new female contingent of shipyard workers. A 1943 piece in the Bo’s’n’s Whistle titled “It’s a Man’s World… Or Is It?” discusses the influx of women workers and features photographs of women in seventeen different roles, including sheet metal worker, tool checker, material clerk, machinist, crane operator, draftsman, messenger, welder, electrician’s helper, shipwright helper, and electrical journeyman. Another one-page spread highlights the new uniforms designed especially for female shipyard employees. In one cartoon a burly woman points her telephone at a crying baby saying, “Here, you talk to the foreman. Explain why I didn’t show up for work today” while a pot boils over in the background. In another, a female worker in overalls stands at a drugstore makeup counter pulling bolts, screws, and wrenches from her pockets as she searches for cash. Other clippings poke fun at sexist attitudes – a cartoon in which the first panel, dated 1942, depicts numerous male workers whistling at a lone female employee, with a second panel dated 1943 in which the tables are turned and the single male worker runs a gauntlet of leering women. In another a man faints at a black tie event when a glamorously dressed woman informs him that she is on his welding crew. In one case Tyson annotated an illustration of a wolf in a suit leering at a young woman, labelling the wolf “shipyard worker” and the lady “booth attendant”. A full-page cartoon in pencil drawn by either Tyson or one of her friends depicts two female employees complaining about the behaviour they were exposed to on a daily basis. Tyson also didn’t shy away from overtly sexist material – she saved several comics whose attitudes would today be considered questionable (an out of control crane with the caption “Woman Driver!”), though whether she found these entirely offensive or simply a normal part of life is an open question.
Tyson stayed at Oregon Ship until early 1945, when she moved to San Diego, where she joined a girlfriend who was working for the Ryan Aeronautical Company’s engineering department and enjoyed the nightlife and social opportunities of California. The final scrapbook contains material from this period, including diagrams and plans from her work at Ryan and the termination notice she received in August 1945 when the end of the war resulted in significant staff cutbacks. Other material includes nightlife ephemera and letters, telegrams, and cards from her boyfriend Edward A. Lloyd, who served aboard the USS Marcus Island, a Casablanca class escort carrier.
Though it is unclear what happened to Tyson following the end of the conflict, this set of scrapbooks is an important record of a woman’s life in the United States between the 1920s and 1940s, and offers a first-hand perspective on the movement of women into engineering and industrial work on the Home Front during the Second World War. A superb historical record.
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