GRANDMA WORKED ON THE RAILROAD

By Michele Norton Mattoon

Grandma worked on the railroad. No, that’s not a typo. Grandma worked on the railroad. No, not a cushy desk job! My grandmother, Mary Grady, of Ravensdale, Washington, at age 40, went to work on an all-woman railroad section gang and worked eight hours a day doing back-breaking manual labor. Women do all the jobs men do now, but that wasn’t the case in 1942. In fact, it was such a big deal that The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Pathé and Time Magazine all came to town to report on it. 

First, let me tell you a little about Grandma. Born Marija Bele in Slovenia in 1902, Grandma lived on and worked the fields (haying) at the family farm in her small community. Our family has always said we were from “good peasant stock” and I think Grandma’s beginnings prove that.

After marrying and immigrating to America in September 1922 at age 20, Grandma arrived in Hobart, Washington. Her husband had settled there the year before. Alone, and not knowing a word of English, Grandma traveled by train from her home to France, boarded a ship in Le Havre, sailed to New York (steerage, of course), then crossed the country to Seattle via rail. Determined to assimilate, she taught herself English by reading newspapers, working crossword puzzles, interacting with younger family members and speaking only English at home.

Later, Grandma moved to Ravensdale, was naturalized and changed her name to Mary in 1928. She worked a variety of other jobs including janitorial work; but it was always manual labor. With all of this, she also had a husband, three daughters and a small farm (cows, pigs, chickens, a Victory Garden and MORE HAY) to help manage. She cleaned, canned, and cooked, and seemingly fed the world, ensuring there was always extra in case anyone showed up at her door looking hungry. During the depression, the family sold milk and eggs to the neighbors to help make ends meet. By this time, Grandma was a tough bird, and no stranger to hard work.

So, here’s how the section-gang job came about: five local women went to work for the Northern Pacific Railway during WWII due to a labor shortage. Because there were so many men away at war or working in the war industry, there was nobody available to work on the tracks. Michele (Mike) Mola, a section gang boss, found himself with a section and no gang. The first member recruited for his new crew was his wife, Esther, who was shortly joined by Grandma and three other women. Housewives and mothers all; these women needed work and were happy to be supporting the war effort. They weren’t the only ones working though; their husbands were toiling away as railroad men, coal miners and heavy equipment operators.

That’s Grandma, second from the right. Note the
giant tools and the “Rosie the Riveter” headscarves!¹

The gang worked near Ravensdale on a section of the tracks, between mile posts 82-1/2 and 91, roughly, from Covington to Kanasket. They dug out and replaced 150 to 200-pound railroad ties, while swinging sledgehammers and wielding picks, shovels and spike pullers. They did all manner of track repair, in all kinds of weather and even operated speeder cars (they looked fun, but were apparently, no picnic). They were, of course, paid much lower than their male counterparts, around 72 or 73 cents a day. That’s equal to $11.23 in today’s dollars. Can you imagine that kind of work for that kind of money in any year? Even men couldn’t find fault with their results, but they still said it wasn’t “women’s work”.

Reporter Doug Welch, of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, ran a story² in 1942 about the crew entitled “Words Fail ‘Boss’ of Women Section Hands”. Following is the beginning of the story:

“Sometimes Michele Mola, section foreman for the Northern Pacific Railway at Ravensdale, can scarcely believe it himself.

“For twenty-seven years – since 1924 with the Northern Pacific – he has been working his way up in the railway business – to what? To bossing a gang of five women section hands.

“For twenty-seven years out on the track in all kinds of weather Michele Mola has been using the kind of language that gets things done, good round Anglo-Saxon phrases, words with muscles and hair on their chests. And now poor Mr. Mola, with his five husky feminine section hands, finds himself completely out of vocabulary. He can only stand and sputter. His own wife is one of his crew.

“Michele Mola can’t make up his mind whether he should call his gang ‘ladies’ or ‘girls’. From force of habit he still calls them ‘boys’ and ‘you guys’ but he knows it won’t do.

“’I guess I’ll have to get along with them’, he says sadly. ‘I’ll either kill them or they’ll kill me’ “.

However, another paragraph further down showed that Mola didn’t have it all bad (tongue firmly in cheek):

“Well, there’s one thing,’ he says, peering hopefully for a silver lining, “I won’t have no trouble with Rule G. They won’t be showing up with hangovers. And already since my wife has been working out here with me, she puts me up a better lunch.”

So that was pretty much it. 

However, during this short period of time, my mom recalled going to the Black Diamond movie theater and seeing a Pathé newsreel. She was embarrassed that her mother was up on the big screen in a film clip (I wish I could find it)! Later, Mom claimed to have found the group’s picture in the Encyclopedia Britannica in the Tahoma High School Library in the late 1940s. (I haven’t found that yet, either.) That notwithstanding, Time Magazine put, as Grandma used to say, “my best side forward” and published a picture of the gang in the November 23, 1942 issue. Unfortunately, nothing more was mentioned about the crew other than what was in the picture’s caption³. 

They were a novelty for sure, and it’s not really known if they were ever the only all-female section gang, but they certainly got their 15 minutes of fame considering the crew only worked together for about 5 months from September 1942 to February 1943. When men became available to replace them, of course, the women were laid off and had to find other work.

The Time Magazine photo. Grandma is on the far left, back to the camera.

After that, Grandma got a job at Boeing, working in the paint shop. Her job was installing decals in the B-29 Superfortress. Our family’s own “Rosie the Riveter” was still working for the war effort and still doing “men’s work”. After developing an allergy to the paint, she got work in the Malmo Nursery; another manual labor job. After that, there were several restaurant jobs, ill health (including sciatica and heart problems – probably due to the hard work) literally moving the house from railroad property in Ravensdale to an acre in Black Diamond, widowhood, becoming a wonderful grandmother and finally, retirement.

Thirty years on, The Seattle Times dug up the old story, and Grandma and Mrs. Louise Saftich found themselves being interviewed by reporter Don Duncan for his weekly “Driftwood Diary” column.⁴ 

So, sitting in her kitchen in 1972, Grandma rattled off these gems:

“The first time I was supposed to flag down a train near Covington, I was all by myself and very nervous,” Mrs. Grady said. “I managed to flag it and the engineer stopped. Then he looked at me and said: “’Oh my, it’s a woman.’” (As I recall, the language was a little bit stronger…)

Grandma told Duncan that she saw Dinah Shore on TV dressed in overalls, singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”. Her observation? “She’s a very pretty lady, but I don’t think she could have done the work. She didn’t have the build for it.” Classic Grandma. Hilarious. And true.

My favorite? “We proved women could do a man’s work. But I always knew that anyway.” 

That’s right Grandma, you sure did.

Photo from “The All-Woman Railroad Gang” by Don Duncan

Michele Norton Mattoon

1 Barbara Nilson, Ravensdale Reflections (self-published, 2004), 127.

2 Welch, Doug. “Words Fail ‘Boss’ of Women Section Hands.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1942 (unknown date and page).

3 “Working on the Railroad.” Time Magazine, Volume XL, Number 21, November 23, 1942, 25.

4 Duncan, Don. “The All-Woman Railroad Gang.” The Seattle Times, July 2, 1972, Magazine section.