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Women's Labor Movements: Detroit
"They used to sneak out cigars in their bosoms, in the you know
-- generously endowed, so they took about a dozen cigars."
John Jackowski, Chene Street Archives
Kristen Anderson
University of Michigan
Department of History
2014
Detroit: The Motor City. The automobile production industry is synonymous with the city's name. However, Detroit was an industrial center of variety. Tobacco quickly became one of Detroit's leading industries. In 1913, the tobacco industry was the city's third largest employer. Cigar production workers, however, differed from the laborers of other industries in one obvious way:
the vast majority were POLISH women.
Kristen Anderson
University of Michigan
Department of History
2014
"The Motor City."
gettyimages.com
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