HAMB link w/Plymouth assembly line pics

[deathbound]

Hope this hasn't been posted here already...................very cool pics.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=603122&highlight=1938+plymouth

[Plymouthy Adams]

Interesting...each car had to be manually locked into the jigs it appears...find any plastic in these cars and you could track it back to the owners lunch box..

[oldodge41]

Thanks for the link. I am always impressed by the clay mock-ups. The guys in the paint booth with the rag respirators probably didn't live to old age. To me those pictures show proud Americans working hard, earning a living. They probably went home tired, and satisfied.

[Don Coatney]

How times have changed. I did not see one worker wearing blue jeans. Most were wearing wool.

[bbbbbb99]

I grew up in Detroit, born 1960 and Pops worked for Dodge truck. Makes me unbelievably sad ( I hate to say), when I think about how proud that city once was and what it has become.

[Bingster]

That was America at its industrial best. Cars made to last. Pride in workmanship. The only regrettable aspect of those photos is that they seem to have the black workers in the paint booth with what looks to be improvised respirators. Now, an America that could design and build these cars knew all about health hazards and respirators. They could have issued them. Why not? And why the black guys in there in what amounts to a gas chamber. Those fumes were incredibly toxic and strong. And you can see on his nose the accumilated paint spray on the cloth.

But that was also America at that time. We did the same thing on the passenger trains. Black help was imported from Texas and other states to work in the hot, non-air conditioned dining car kitchens. A railroad chef that I interviewed for a book said that the black help did the jobs that the white workers didn't want to do. Hence, the paint spray booth workers.

[P-12 Tommy]

Never seen these. Thanks for posting!

Tom

[Young Ed]

Makes me miss Dads 39. First old car I ever really drove anyplace. I remember rolling backwards almost an entire block when I still had my learners permit

[Joe Flanagan]

Shirts tucked in, hair combed. Wow. My father was born in 1914. He took me to see a Red Sox game at Fenway Park in the early 1970s. I think he was the only man in a suit and tie. And that was to sit in the bleachers.