Women recruited
Museum to recognize early Packard workers
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WARREN -- Packard Electric's early women office workers will be the topic Saturday during a National Packard Museum lecture.
In a belated commemoration of Labor Day, the museum will present "Mary Andrews, Anna Brooks and Edith Gorton: Packard's early female office workers (and their significant second careers)."
This one-hour educational program is open to the public and free with paid admission to the museum. The program begins at 12:15 p.m.
Clerical work in the United States once was reserved almost exclusively for men.
This changed in the 1880s, following introduction of typewriters and dictation machines. Women did not replace men in existing jobs, but were recruited to fill the tens of thousands of positions created by new office technology.
Mary Andrews, Anna Brooks and Edith Gorton were important figures in Packard history whose contributions deserve recognition, museum officials stated.
Edith Gorton was hired as a bookkeeper in the Packard lamp plant office in the 1890s, followed by Anna Brooks and Mary Andrews, who were hired as stenographers a few years later.
Gorton was promoted to the position of head bookkeeper, then auditor, before her untimely death at age 40; Andrews served as J.W. Packard's secretary and dictated the famous Packard Motor Car Co. advertising slogan "Ask the Man Who Owns One"; Brooks served as office manager of GE's Packard Lamp Division until it closed in the 1920s.
Andrews and Brooks blazed trails for other women after leaving Packard.
Andrews worked alongside Harriet Taylor Upton in the successful fight for women's right to vote. Brooks entered the political arena, becoming the first woman elected to Warren City Council and the first woman to run for mayor.
The National Packard Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m.