B A C K T H E N
Eastport Sardine Factory
Photo courtesy of T.W. Smillie; National Archives
Sealers at work at an Eastport sardine factory about 1880. The air appears well polluted with fumes form molten lead,smoldering charcoal, and sizzling tobacco juice. A visitor to a lobster canning factory–some factories canned both sardines and lobster–viewed a similar scene:
The solderers, each with his little sheet-iron furnace, bristling with tools, on the table beside him, and the white light of one of a long row of small windows playing over him, give the suggestion of alchemist. Over their heads in a prominent place is a placard: “Notice! How to Preserve Health: Let These Tools Alone!!!”
The sealers in the photo are using tobacco juice-plastered, charcoal-heated furnaces, later replaced by forced-air, kerosene-fueled heaters. Eastport then became a leading consumer of kerosene, marking the demise of the local charcoal “burning,” or manufacturing, industry– in 1881, 45,000 bushels of charcoal had been produced in nearby Pembroke for the canning factories.
Sealers, the aristocrats of the industry, soldered the tops to the filled cans. Cans were placed on an iron disk rotated by a foot treadle. Holding a ribbon of solder in one hand, his hot iron in the other, and, giving the can whirl with his foot, the sealer laid down a seal {with such neatness and dispatch that your admiration is excited. ” In 1887, H.B. Thayer, a sealer at Lubec, sealed 1,700 cans of quarter-oil, sardines in nine hours and twenty minutes. In 1899, 1616 tons of lead solder were used to seal this. (Lead poisoning was a concern in some quarters.)
The cans went next to the “bath room” for boiling. Boiled cans were punctured, then resealed by a drop of solder. Any cooled can which did not become concave was returned for repair, and the miscreant sealer, seamer, or canmaker, identified by scratched initials, was fined for his error.
Can making – as distinct from can filling – was also a big Eastport industry. Because of the great amount of storage space that would have been required for pre-made cans, most cans were made at the factory during the canning season, some factories devoting half their area for this purpose. Cans began as sheets of tin-plate; after the sheets were machine-split, “seamers” soldered the joints together, and “can-makers” soldered on the bottoms. The printing of labels on the sheets at the “decorating” factory was a separate industry.
The introduction in the early 1900s of perfected can-making machines which, in minutes, could crank out more cans than could be made in hours by hand, was an economic disaster for many factory workers, their skills rendered of no value.
Text by William H. Bunting from A Day’s Work, A Sampler of Historic Maine Photographs, 1860-1920, Part I. Published by Tilbury House Publishers, Gardiner, Maine, 800-582-1899