"Welfare" basket from Bethlehem Steel
notes: label: Description
content: This “welfare basket” was used to store the personal belongings of steelworkers employed at Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Baskets including this one hung in the plant’s “welfare room,” a room where workers could change from their personal clothing into their company-issued safety uniforms at the beginning of the day, store their personal clothing and belongings while working, and then change back out of their uniforms at the end of the day.
label: Description
content: Thus, the welfare room was like a modern locker room, except that items were stored in baskets instead of in lockers. The baskets were raised and lowered by pulling and releasing a cable/chain to and from the ceiling by a pulley. At the opposite end of each basket a pad lock could be attached and locked to a stand on the ground.
label: Description
content: These areas were called “welfare rooms” because companies provided them to improve employee well-being, or welfare. In the early twentieth century, the world “welfare” was most often used in the context of “industrial welfare,” efforts to improve working conditions such keeping a sanitary workplace, providing break rooms, etc. The early twentieth century simultaneously saw a movement called “scientific management,” employing consultants to maximize workplace productivity.
label: Description
content: This basket was collected at the flagship Bethlehem, Pennsylvania plant of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation after it closed. Bethlehem Steel had been a giant in American industry, producing the steel for the Golden Gate Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, the Chrysler building, and many other icons of the American landscape. During World War II, Bethlehem Steel employed over 300,000 workers to produce over a thousand ships, and in the 1950s its production peaked with domestic industrial products such as cars, air duct, machines and tools. After its decline and closure, its former plants in Pennsylvania became part of the “Rust Belt,” a area that had once prospered off of steel and iron but was left economically struggling in the wake of factory closures.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanical and Civil Engineering
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Bethlehem Steel Corporation
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1999.0154.02
label: accession number
content: 1999.0154
label: catalog number
content: 1999.0154.02
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Basket
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall:;
label: Measurements
content: overall: 13 1/2 in x 11 in; 34.29 cm x 27.94 cm