Men at Work, page 27
A question I do not address in the text, but which deserves to be mentioned, concerns Hine’s ideas for Men at Work. It is often believed that Hine conceived of his book as being for children. Kate Sampsell-Willmann explicitly claims: “Men at Work was intended as a Children’s book” (Lewis Hine as Social Critic, 168). Alexander Nemerov calls it “a book for child readers” (167). This contention is based on Hine’s letter to Paul Kellogg (Sept. 8, 1932) requesting a review of the book in The Survey Graphic, in which Hine says: “It was built as a picture book for children, from the adolescent up, and even we blasé adults can get a good deal from it, I hope” (Kaplan, Photo Story, 48; cf. Sampsell-Willmann, Lewis Hine as Social Critic, 187). But a book for children “from the adolescent up” pretty much excludes children, per se, and in his 1909 article, “Social Photography: How the Camera May Help in Social Uplift,” Hine refers to adults as “us older children.” This leaves open the question of whether Hine was himself being playful. Further, it provides an additional example of how an impression of Hine’s personality influences the interpretation of his words. (See Lewis Hine, “Social Photography: How the Camera May Help in Social Uplift,” in Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction at the Thirty-Sixth Annual Session Held in the City of Buffalo, New York, June 9–16, 1909, ed. Alexander Johnson [Press of Fort Wayne, 1909], 355–59.)
In his letters, Hine comes across as quite playful, as well as modest, erudite, passionate, and occasionally arch. Interpreting Hine’s personality as revealed in his private writings may also affect how we interpret his descriptions of his experience at the Empire State Building. In my view, Hine had a teacher’s sensitivity to the specific needs of his audience. The “thrills” he describes to young readers in Young Wings may have been more dangerous than he lets on there, when explicitly addressing young readers. On December 10, 1930, Hine gave a talk at the Hastings-on-Hudson Rotary Club. A local paper reported:
Lewis W. Hine, photographer of Locust Hill, almost lost his life when a plank gave way while he was walking 60 stories above the ground on the new Empire State Building, he revealed before the Rotary Club at its luncheon at Farragut Inn yesterday. Mr. Hine, a former Rotarian, declared the ‘safety gang’ had not anchored the plank and as he stepped on it the board began to ‘give,’ but that his other foot, which came down immediately, righted the plank again. A steel worker nearby told Mr. Hine that he almost fainted when he saw the local man step on the plank, he said.
(“Photographer Tells of Skyscraper Thrill,” Statesman [or Herald?] [Yonkers, NY], Dec. 10, 1930 [ESB Scrapbook 2 (1–37)]; for Young Wings, see New York Public Library, Judith Mara Gutman papers [MssCol 5982], Series II.B. Lewis W. Hine and the American Social Conscience [1967] box 22, folder 2: “Writings Lewis Hine National Research Project 1937”).
Hine’s modesty frequently led him to conceal his own feelings about his work. Therefore, it’s worth noting when he refers to himself. Regarding Hine’s ride in a basket to photograph the completion of the mooring mast, see the image of “Sluke” Ryerson and Oscar Johnson, now held at the George Eastman Museum, which shows the basket itself (GEM: 1977.0160.0038 and here on page 219). The only comment in which Hine refers to himself in all the surviving documentation is scribbled on the back of another image, also housed at the George Eastman Museum, showing the derrick that lofted this basket, the same derrick installed by the McClain brothers and “Blackie” Bavona/Bivona (GEM: 1977.0162.0001). Hine writes there, perhaps with some pride: “The very derrick which swung Hine out.”
Hine’s photographs of daring steelworkers, of course, remain central to his popularity. The term “Skyboy” or “Sky Boy” has become generic when referring to these images. Most commonly, it is used today to designate Hine’s portrait of Victor Gosselin riding the hoisting ball. But Hine himself used the title for a different photo, published as a frontispiece to Men at Work, which I discuss in chapter 9, “The Sky Boy,” although Hine also gave that photo the title Icarus in other contexts. Hine was still referring to the photo as “Icarus” in May 1931 (“Sky Boys Who ‘Rode the Ball’ on Empire State,” The Literary Digest 109, no. 8 [May 23, 1931]: 30–32). In that article, Hine comments, “The name was suggested by the fact that the figure expresses the sense of flight.” Nevertheless, to my ear, Sky Boy is a far superior title, considering that in the myth, Icarus flies too close to the sun on his waxen wings and plummets back to earth. Despite his frequent playfulness, there is no reason to believe Hine wished to be ironic about the ironworkers’ audacious skyward climb. Instead, the title Icarus may again show Hine employing “grand” mythological language, without fully considering its implications. But The Sky Boy itself becomes a myth. Completing the circle, an idealized drawing of Hine’s portrait of Frenchy Gosselin was used as the cover for an actual children’s book, Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building, by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by James E. Ransome (Dragonfly Books, 2012).
Another phrase often associated with Hine’s photographic practice is the “human document.” It’s not clear when or where Hine began to use this phrase to describe his own motivations. Interestingly, however, the editors of Life magazine also used the phrase to denote the surprising humanity of otherwise alien lives in a note to the premier issue in 1936. In this instance, however, the editors were not referring to Lewis Hine but to Margaret Bourke-White. Describing her photograph of the newly constructed Fort Peck Dam in Montana, featured on Life’s first cover, they wrote, “What the Editors expected—for use in some later issue—were construction pictures as only Bourke-White can take them. What the Editors got was a human document of American frontier life which, to them at least, was a revelation” (“Introduction to This First Issue of Life,” Life 1, no. 1 [Nov. 23, 1936]: 3).
Finally, whatever Hine’s attraction to machines and modern industrial processes, his abiding concern remained the people he encountered. Throughout his career, Hine chose to photograph his human subjects frontally, often looking at the camera. Variations on the phrase “look him in the eye” thus recur frequently in the critical reception of his work.
In captioning his photo of Peter Madden, discussed in chapter 7, “‘Look Him in the Eye,’” with this phrase, it is possible that Hine was alluding to Walt Whitman’s poem, “Mannahatta”: “The mechanics of the city, the masters, well form’d, / beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes.”
Hine’s preference for eye contact characterizes his whole career, as many critics have noted. See especially Alan Trachtenberg’s observation regarding the Ellis Island portraits:
He [Hine] learned how to achieve a certain physical distance, corresponding to a psychological distance, that allowed for a free interaction between the eyes of the subject and the camera eye. Put another way, he allowed his subjects room for their self-expression. This is something that cannot be taught, cannot be reduced to rules. As much as in any other aspect of his style, Hine’s own character expresses itself in where he places himself vis-à-vis his subject. The camera set down before the subject opens a place, creates a scene in which the subject can stand forth and the camera can do its work of recording.
(“Ever—the Human Document,” in Naomi Rosenblum, America & Lewis Hine, 125).
See also Kate Sampsell-Willmann: “Although the subject may have felt like they were staring into a black anonymous lens . . . , from Hine’s perspective, he was looking them straight in the eye, squarely and without flinching” ( “Lewis Hine, Ellis Island, and Pragmatism,” 228).
THE MEN
The literature regarding “workers” in general on the Empire State Building is vast. The literature about specific individuals is by contrast exceedingly scanty. Victor Gosselin was featured in John Cushman Fistere’s profile, “No Timid Man Could Hold This Job,” The American Magazine 111, no. 6 (June 1931): 80–81, 146, in the column Interesting People. This profile is reproduced almost verbatim in Jim Rasenberger’s High Steel (205–207). Other workers appear in Edmund M. Littell, “Men Wanted,” The American Magazine 109, no. 4 (Apr. 1930): 46–51, 115–17; “Sky Boys Who ‘Rode the Ball’ on Empire State,” The Literary Digest 109, no. 8 (May 23, 1931): 30–32; Margaret Norris and Brenda Ueland, “Riding the Girders,” Saturday Evening Post, April 11, 1931, 14, 98, 101–2; and Margaret Norris, Heroes and Hazards (Macmillan, 1932). See also Lowell Thomas, Men of Danger (Frederick A. Stokes, 1936).
While the men themselves have rarely been considered as historical subjects, many aspects of their work and even their attire have been subject to extensive examination. For a fascinating deep dive into the history of the work shirt, see Bryan Shettig, “A Brief History of the Work Shirt 1886–1930” and “A Brief History of the Work Shirt, Part 2: 1930–1940,” The Rite Stuff (blog), The Rite Stuff (Nov. 8, 2021).
Information about the Certificates of Superior Craftsmanship and the New York Building Congress’s Committee on Recognition of Craftsmanship comes from the archives of the New York Building Congress (NYBC) at the Tamiment and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (WAG.167). In addition to unpublished reports and documents, the archive holds the NYBC’s official publication, the Building Congress News, which changed its name in July 1931 to New York Building Congress News. My interpretation of the history and symbolic significance of the Certificates of Superior Craftsmanship is based almost entirely on writings by William Orr Ludlow, who chaired the NYBC’s Committee on Recognition of Craftsmanship from its inception in 1925 until 1940. Belief that the recognition of craftsmanship should be “spiritual” and not monetary was a central tenet of all statements by members of the committee and those who spoke at award ceremonies. Nevertheless, this belief was not universally held beyond the confines of the NYBC. John Jakob Raskob, lead financier on the Empire State Building and a pioneer in both installment buying and employee stock plans, understood the question of the worker’s “interest” quite differently than Ludlow: “Unless a manager or worker has an interest—a financial interest—in what he does, he will hardly develop his capability. He is not content to see all the money he makes going to someone else.” Raskob goes on to say, “Together with money he must have complete responsibility in his own sphere. He must be more than a cog” (quoted in Farber, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, 190).
The design of the Craftsmanship Award button was updated in 1929 through a competition, curated by William Van Alen, at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design. The winner was Ray Wever, a student at the institute (William O. Ludlow, “Report of the Committee on Recognition of Craftsmanship,” Building Congress News, April 1930, 6). While the award’s utility in furthering the careers of its winners may be ambiguous, it was considered a legal guarantee of competence. In December 1931, the New York Building Congress News reported that a Certificate of Superior Craftsmanship had been recognized in the New York State Supreme Court as evidence of “expert witness” status (“Supreme Court Recognizes Craftsmanship Certificate,” New York Building Congress News, Dec. 1931, 8). Although I have cast doubt on their authenticity, the Building Congress News frequently published blurbs of praise for the awards from workmen (see “Report of Committee on Recognition of Craftsmanship,” Building Congress News, Jan. 1928, 8, and “Report of Committee on Recognition of Craftsmanship,” Building Congress News, May 1928, 6). Another fun fact: The gold button awarded to Empire State Craftsman entitled them to free entry to the building’s observation deck (“Craftsmen from Fifty-Four Buildings Attend Meetings,” Building Congress News, May 1931, 6).
I have concentrated here on the question, Who were the men? But there is a parallel question of importance concerning those who worked on the Empire State Building, largely unaddressed, Who weren’t the men? In the first case, they weren’t women. The only two women mentioned in the Starrett’s Notebook and Photo Album are the nurse, C. Lynch, about whom I could find nothing further, and Elizabeth Eager, who died as a result of falling debris (see below for more about Elizabeth Eager). Among the materials suppliers for the building, Ann Anzel appears to have been the only woman. She ran the Specialty Manufacturing Company, which provided all the building’s mirrors (“Women in Business ‘Happiest in World,’” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 31, 1931, 16). They were not Black Americans. During construction, the Colored Mechanics Association complained to former Governor Alfred E. Smith that no “negro mechanics” were employed on the construction of the Empire State Building (“Al Smith Recognizes Fight of Mechanics,” The Chicago Defender, Oct. 18, 1930, 10). For a history of labor union discrimination, see Marc Karson, American Labor Unions and Politics, 1900–1918 (Southern Illinois University Press, 1958). See also Herbert Hill, “The Problem of Race in American Labor History,” Reviews in American History 24, no. 2 (June 1996): 189–208. For a historical perspective, see Charles H. Wesley, “Organized Labor and the Negro” (1939), Howard University Faculty Reprints, paper 213 (https://dh.howard.edu/reprints/213).
The celebration of Kahnawake Mohawks in construction begins with Joseph Mitchell, “The Mohawks in High Steel,” The New Yorker, September 17, 1949, 38–52, reprinted in Edmund Wilson, Apologies to the Iroquois (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1960). Kahnawake Mohawks were recognized as an independent nation in 1926 and were singled out again as a distinct nation with the right to work in the US in 1940. A 1940 New York Times editorial, “Our Indian Colony,” mentioned that approximately three hundred “Indian” ironworkers lived in Brooklyn and the Bronx. “If a structural steel worker requires superior physical coordination, the Iroquois stock has it. They are a superior race in many ways” (May 20, 1940, 13). For an excellent discussion of how the figure of the “Indian” was assimilated into twentieth-century modernism, while retaining the traditional ethnographic clichés of wildness, nomadic life, and authenticity, see Fiona Green, “‘The Iroquois on the Girders’: Poetry, Modernity, and the Indian Ironworker,” Critical Quarterly 55, no. 2 (July 10, 2013): 2–25. For a history of Mohawk ironworkers from the perspective of the workers themselves, see Richard Hill, Skywalkers: A History of Indian Ironworkers (Woodland Indian Cultural Educational Centre, 1987), 29. Hill’s book contains a comprehensive bibliography of essays and articles concerning the Kahnawake ironworkers.
In ironworker Harold McClain’s conversations with documentary filmmaker Nina Rosenblum, he stated that Victor Gosselin was Mohawk (personal communication, Jan. 25, 2020).
Regarding construction workers’ attitudes toward the Craftsmanship Awards, I claim that the men’s voices were not recorded. But this does not necessarily mean the men were never invited to speak. According to a New York Times report, coincidentally published on May 1, 1931, the day of the Empire State Building’s grand opening, seventeen men received Certificates of Superior Craftsmanship for work on the Paramount Annex, 521 West Forty-Third Street. At that ceremony, held on April 30, 1931, “most of them made brief acceptance speeches” (“Mechanics Get Awards: Paramount Annex Called Evidence of Faith in Future,” 55). As far as I have been able to determine, the winners’ speeches were not recorded.
Questions of Identification
Hine’s handwritten notes on the backs of his Empire State photos contain many names that I was unable to connect with faces. These prints appear sometimes to have served as Hine’s notepads. On the back of an image of Victor Gosselin, now held at the George Eastman Museum, Hine records Frenchy’s name (though he spells it “Geslin”), an address, along with numerous other names. Among these are Harry Stetler, foreman, and “Red-Derrickman” (GEM: 1977:0160:0026). “Red” the derrickman is mentioned in other notations, making a tentative visual identification possible. I believe he appears in three photos included in Men at Work, most strikingly the one captioned “A derrick man moves up to the next floor.” According to Hine’s notes, “Red” may have been a policeman in Brooklyn (GEM: 1977.0165.0084). In one image, titled “Derrick gang noon hour,” Red sits in the center of his gang (GEM: 1977.0164.0005). I was unable to locate “Harry” Stetler, but Horace A. Stetler, born in Pennsylvania in 1896, is well represented in the genealogical databases. His draft registration card from April 1942 confirms that he worked for Harris Structural Steel, which appears to have supplied men to Post & McCord to erect the Empire State’s structural frame. (On the same photo of Frenchy, Hine scribbled “Harris Struct Steel” beneath Gosselin’s name.) According to the 1930 census, Horace Stetler lived in Ozone Park, Queens, New York, with his wife and their two-year-old son.
On another photograph of Victor Gosselin, seen in Men at Work to the right of the caption, “As the building pushes skyward the connectors stay aloft,” Hine writes, “‘Frenchy,’ our Modern Tarzan, and his buddy take a ride on the ball.” The “buddy” who rides the ball with Frenchy was identified by Harold McClain as Buddy Turner. Turner is featured in a series of Hine photos (see Avery 1971.003.00137, 1971.003.00138, 1971.003.00139; GEM: 1985.0156.0004). On the back of yet another print showing Frenchy and this man rigging the derrick, Hine has written “Buddie Turner” with an address, as well as another name, “Curley/D. Stuart?,” and the address “2033 Lemoine Ave., Ft. Lee, N.J.” (GEM: 1977.0157:0030). Census records identify two brothers, both ironworkers, living with their parents at this address in Fort Lee, New Jersey: James P. and Daniel B. Stuart. Both men were born in Alabama. It was common for ironworkers to be known by nicknames. Daniel appears to be “Curley,” as noted on the back of Hine’s photo. It is possible the other was “Alabama,” the man mentioned in Margaret Norris and Brenda Ueland’s article, “Riding the Girders,” published in The Saturday Evening Post (Apr. 11, 1931). Hine’s note creates some confusion, however, since it’s unclear whether he means to identify Buddy Turner or Curley Stuart in the photo. I am inclined to believe it’s Buddy Turner, following Harold McClain.
