Proviso Yards, December, 1942

After the US entered the Second World War, the government set up a domestic propaganda operation called the Office of War Information to help rally citizens as the country geared up for the fight. Isolationism had been a strong force in the 1930s and the America Firsters argued against intervention even after war broke out on the European continent. The OWI helped neutralize opposition once the US entered the war. Despite its importance this has to have been one of the mildest forms of propaganda conducted by a state at war. One of its principal tools was documentary photography and its photographs did not preach but simply put on display a view of America's industrial might and of the people whose labor was one of its chief resources.

This gentle approach had been learned in the 1930s when an agency called the Farm Security Administration was used photographic images to convince people that the miseries caused by the Great Depression — great as they were — could be first mitigated and finally overcome by the strengthening of the agricultural (and in due course industrial) economy. The result was what has to have been the most aesthetically potent propaganda campaigns of all time. I've written about this before. Click the FSA label in the panel at right to see these blog posts. The Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, which holds most of these photos, has collected some of them here.

When the US declared war on the Axis Powers the FSA photography unit was merged into the new Office of War Information and the emphasis of the group's documentary output shifted from Depression to war mobilization. I've shown quite a few OWI photos in previous posts. To see them, click the OWI label at right.

War mobilization meant that factories which had been making products for domestic consumption switched over to production of war materiel.[1] The OWI photos show American workers making ships, planes, bombs, and all the other implements of war — large numbers of them being women doing jobs to free men for the armed services.[2]

War mobilization also meant that the volume of traffic on the nation's transportation systems shot upward. And no traffic grew more than that of the railroads. As this graph shows, the numbers of miles of freight and passenger transportation by rail decreased substantially during the Depression years and then shot upwards to levels that have never since been equalled.

{Caption: source: Economic Results of Diesel Electric Motive Power. On the Railways of the United States of America (pdf) by H.F. Brown for the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (London, 1960)}

The war years of the 1940s were the glory years of US rail service and Jack Delano, one of OWI's documentary photographers, took pains to show its strength. Here are some photos from one shoot, made at the rail yards of the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company in December 1942.[3]

In this one Delano shows both the great size of the yards and the volume of freight they handled.

{Caption: View of a classification yard at C & NW RR's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.}

In this detail notice the man on top of a freight car as well as the one at the rail switch.


Here you see a trainman walking toward the location where Delano is positioned. You can tell that Delano is standing on an overpass because of the dangling warning cords hung over the tracks above the man's head.


This photo shows an overpass such as the one on which Delano was standing to take the previous one. You can tell that the shoot carried over enough days so that some shots show snow on the ground and some do not.

{Caption: A general view of a classification yard at C & NW RR's Proviso yard, Chicago, Ill.}

I've stitched together details from two aerial photos of the Proviso Yards to show something of their scale. Click the image to view full size. The photos were taken a year or so before Delano did his shoot there.

{Details from photos of the 1938-1941 Aerial Survey of Illinois; source:
Illinois Aerial Photos}

This detail shows where Delano was standing to take the second of the two images of the yard. I can't see a tower there but suppose there is one and that he's on it.


Delano's photos of the freight yards don't show many workers and it's apparent that this vast system required very few people to operate it. Here is the man who had main responsibility for the operation along with an assistant or maybe just a man on break.

{Caption: The yardmaster's office at the receiving yard, North Proviso(?), C & NW RR, Chicago, Ill.}

The Yardmaster


Assistant or man on break.


Another detail from this photo.


And another.


And one final one.


Here are a couple of freight engines moving what is probably a long train of hopper cars.

{Caption: Locomotive in a railroad yard, Chicago and Northwestern RR, near Chicago, Ill.}

Unlike the freight yards, the service areas show a fairly high concentration of men at work. Here are locomotives receiving some maintenance.

{Caption: Locomotives over the ash pit at the roundhouse and coaling station at the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad yards, Chicago, Ill.}

The captions of these photos explain their subjects.

{Caption: Chicago and Northwestern railroad locomotive shops, Chicago, Ill.}

{Caption: Worn tires on locomotive wheels are refaced on this machine in the wheel shop of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, Chicago, Ill.}

{Caption: Working on the boiler of a locomotive at the 40th Street shops of the C & NW RR, Chicago, Ill.}

{Caption: Working on a locomotive at the 40th Street shop of the C & NW RR, Chicago, Ill.}

{Caption: A young worker at the C & NW RR 40th Street shops, Chicago, Ill.}

{Caption: Greasing a locomotive at the 40th Street shops of the C & NW RR.}

{Caption: Locomotive lubrication chart in the laboratory of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. The laboratory assistant in foreground is working at a precision balance. Chicago, Ill}

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Some sources:

Selected Bibliography and Related Web Sites about the FSA and OWI from the Library of Congress

Jack Delano, a brief biography from the Museum of Contemporary Photography

Oral history interview with Jack and Irene Delano, 1965 June 12 from the Smithsonian Institution

The Farm Security Administration page at the Library of Congress

Chicago and North Western Transportation Company on wikipedia

Chicago & North Western Historical Society

Links from the Chicago & North Western Historical Society

Chicago & North Western - A Capsule History

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Notes:

[1] My blog post on Fox Conner touches on this. The factory he ran switched from making "porous plasters" to alleviate back pain to making bullet-proof liners for the fuel tanks of airplanes and military tanks.

[2] See for example these photos by OWI's Ann Rosener taken in 1943 at a California shipyard.

[3] All the photos come from the Prints and Photos Div of the Library of Congress.

cabaret

Here are some details from an image I showed a few days ago, Russell Lee's FSA photo called Negro cabaret, taken in April 1941.

First, the photo — again — with the caption given it at the time. As always, click to view full size.


Here are the detail images that I find interesting:

1. The girls, of course, the ostensible subject of the photo, most of whom seem to be just putting in their day's work.



2. The band, giving their work a bit more concentration than the girls, but not seeming to be any happier.






3. The paying customers who are see at the stage-side tables — most appearing to be white and light-skinned (in those times when lightness conveyed more social advantage than it does now). I like the held hands in the first image of this group and the broom in the last. It's curious that many are drinking beer; that's not what we'd expect from what we see in contemporary movies that show the night club scene. It does seem, though, that the beer bottles are more prevalent the farther removed the tables are from front-and-center.





4. Those off the front and above.






Curious, isn't it, that no one is smiling?

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Some links:

1. Wikipedia's article on Slumming. It's hard to say whether the white patron's are doing this or are just out for a night's entertainment at a place they can afford. I suspect the latter. There's more on this subject in an illustrated book called Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940 by Chad C. Heap (University of Chicago Press, 2009).

2. A review of a book of photos and articles about Chicago's South Side at this time: Bronzeville: Black Chicago in Pictures, 1941-1943 - Book Review

3. A book on the work of Russell Lee and the other FSA photographers in Chicago and downstate: Chicago and downstate: Illinois as seen by the Farm Security Administration by Robert L. Reid, ed. by Larry A. Viskochil (University of Illinois Press, 1989)

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Note: All photos are from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection of the Prints and Photos Division of the Library of Congress.

Easter, 1941, on the South Side

Here's another set of photos from the U.S. Farm Security Administration Photography program. These were all taken in April 1941 by Russell Lee. He was then on the South Side of Chicago, an area which included Bronzeville and the Black Belt which were primary destinations for poor rural blacks from the American south during the 1920s and succeeding decades. See Chicago: Destination for the Great Migration for a useful photo essay on this area.

All these photos come from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Captions are all from the photos themselves by FSA staff. Click image to view full size.

Lee covered all aspects of the community. He was able to gain access to apartments of the poor and well to do. He took street shots and shots within public spaces like churches, theaters, and saloons. Some of the best show the South Side's world renowned blues and dance bands in action.

{Old man who lives on South Side of Chicago, Illinois}

{Man-drawn carts are common on South Side of Chicago, Illinois}

{Man on South Side of Chicago, Illinois}

{People sitting on front porches in Negro section of Chicago, Illinois}

{Children of family on relief playing. Chicago, Illinois}

{Marbles is a favorite game on South Side of Chicago, Illinois}

{Marbles is a favorite game on South Side of Chicago, Illinois}

{Where the Negro and white sections on the South Side meet, the white and Negro children sometimes play together, Chicago, Illinois}

{"Storefront" Baptist church during services on Easter morning.}

{Girls waiting for Episcopal Church to end so they can see the processional, South Side of Chicago, Illinois}

{Boys waiting outside of Episcopal Church to see the processional.}

{Hall of second floor of building rented as rooming house. }

{House in Negro section of Chicago, Illinois}

{Dining room of Negro family which is on relief. Chicago, Illinois}

{Living room in home of well-to-do Negro. Chicago, Illinois}

{In front of the movie theater. Chicago, Illinois}

{Negro cabaret. Chicago, Illinois}

{Saturday night in barroom. Southside of Chicago, Illinois}

{Booth in Negro tavern on southside of Chicago, Illinois}

{Musicians at tavern on the southside of Chicago, Illinois}

{Musicians at tavern on the southside of Chicago, Illinois}

{Musicians at tavern on the southside of Chicago, Illinois}

{Musicians at tavern on the southside of Chicago, Illinois}

{Musicians at tavern on the southside of Chicago, Illinois}

{Customers at tavern on the southside of Chicago, Illinois}

{Customers at tavern on the southside of Chicago, Illinois}

{Customers at tavern on the southside of Chicago, Illinois}

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This portrait of Lee is by an unknown photographer.

{Portrait of Russell Lee, FSA (Farm Security Administration) photographer. Taken ca. 1942.}

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A personal note: In the summer of 1968 I trained as a VISTA volunteer with young men from Chicago's South Side. We served in a work camp run by the Hull House Association. This time spent with those guys was one of the best experiences of my life (more on this camp can be found here).