In the 1870s, only a small percentage of the U.S. population worked in offices, and most of them were men. Fifty years later, one-third of the workforce were office workers, half of whom were women. The transformed workplace was characterized by open-plan designs and rapidly evolving technology. But even in the 1930s, it remained overwhelmingly white.
A changed world
The offices of Detroit-based manufacturing company Leland & Faulconer contain just a manager, an engineer, an accountant, and perhaps a male errand boy or apprentice. The layout of the room (pictured above), with its armchairs and handcrafted wooden desks crammed with drawers and dividers, is more like a hotel lounge than a workspace. Despite its 19th-century appearance, this office is poised to transform 20th-century America. Leland & Faulconer, a precision manufacturer of sewing machines and bicycles, had just begun building single-cylinder engines for the first Cadillac horseless carriage. As the automobile transformed the American landscape, the American workplace was also poised to change beyond recognition.
(These are the surprisingly radical origins of Labor Day.)
