Slacks And Calluses: Our Summer In A Bomber Factory Analysis

In the summer of 1943, two American women by the names of Constance Bowman and Clara Marie Allen decided to spend their summer working in a factory located in San Diego. Bowman and Allen worked the swing shift on a B-24 production line at a bomber plant. Before going to work in the factory, they both were teachers so they were unexperienced workers going into the factory. With their decision of going to work in the bomber plant for war effort, this meant things would change for them. They had to dress different and the way they spent their hours in a day changed. Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory revealed a lot about the social class in the lives of women, it did not support the idea of women working in a factory, and it showed

a little bit of sense of patriotism.
Bowman and Allen were teachers before they decided to go work in the bomber factory.

Constance was a high school journalism and English teacher and Clara was a high school art teacher. The way they dressed changed when they became factory workers. They were used to wearing skirts and heels, but with their new job they had to wear slacks. Because of their change of style, they were treated differently, Slacks and Calluses revealed so. “In war-time San Diego there are just two kinds of women: the ones who go to work in skirts, and the ones who go to work in slacks” (Reid and Allen 67). When they dressed in skirts they were treated with respect, like women should be treated, but when they dressed in slacks they were treated with disrespect. The women would look at them with their nose turned up while some men would not do respectful things such as giving up their seats to them when the buses were full (Reid and Allen 72). One day the two women decided to dress up in their skirts and heels to reassure themselves that it was the slacks and not them. They went for a ride on the Point Loma bus and were offered several seats (Reid and Allen 74). The way they dressed showed a

difference.
However, the country did not eagerly embrace the idea of women leaving their homes to work in factories for war production. Women working in factories are just like women working on cars, or building houses without being experienced beforehand. Bowman and Allen had never did any factory work a day in their lives, they were unskilled workers. Some of the tools they had to use and purchase, they were unfamiliar with. Everything dealing with the factory work was new to them. But the fact that the country did not embrace it, did not stop them. They learned all they needed to do and did it. “Anybody can build bombers—if we could,” (Reid and Allen 1) they believed and did just that.
Women were asked by the aircraft industry to come help work in the bomber factory.

They needed the women’s help to keep things and the war flowing. The aircraft industry looked over the fact that some of the women had never done any factory work before, but they needed help and found something that women could learn to do. Not all the women worked in factories out of a sense of patriotism, most of the women had no other opportunities. They needed jobs because they lacked education. But, that is what made Bowman and Allen different from those women, they had a sense of patriotism but they also needed a job to do too. Allen and Bowman gave up their summer vacations to help the aircraft industry during war efforts when they really did not have to. That is what you call a sense of

patriotism.
Slacks and Calluses: Our Summer in a Bomber Factory was a good and easy to read book. It was a very good book to read and understand. It give readers a clue of how things went down in a bomber factory. It also shows that you can do anything, as long as you put your mind to it. That is what Bowman and Allen did. Them along with other women helped when helping hands were needed, some did it because they had no other choice. Either way it goes, the women in the factories went and did what they needed to do and got the job done.