The next time you look at the skyline, consider this: You're beholding a handmade object. Someone's hands guided the girders into place, riveted the bolts, laid the bricks, smoothed the mortar. On the highest point on the tallest tower, someone's hands hoisted the flag to celebrate its finish.
Same thing in the grocery store: Someone's hands turned the key to the tractor, dropped the plow into the earth, picked up a bale of hay to feed the stock. Same thing with everything in your house that came by train: Hands on the throttle, hands on a lever to pour on the steam.
Minnesota doesn't have an image as an industrial state, but if these pictures show anything, it's proof that Minnesota is an industrious state. From the farmers in the plains to the construction workers in the sky; from the hands that work the assembly lines to the workers who extracted the resources, there's hardly an acre of the state that hasn't labored long, and labored hard.
Automation can only do so much. There will always be a need for the hands with skill and strength, and as long as there's a need, Minnesota will provide them.
Twin Cities Ordnance Plant workers packing cartridge belts made at the arms factory in the 1940s. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
February 21, 1987 Bill Meath emerged from a sewer beneath the streets of St. Paul. Rita Reed, Minneapolis Star Tribune ORG XMIT: MER8ac9d6c614ee7a96be3b8f2a60cf5 (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
May 20, 1978 Dick Cassidy looked away as Paul Davis welded a Iron rod. The two are Iron workers for Kaiser. New construction at existing reserve plant. Bruce Bisping, Minneapolis Star Tribune ORG XMIT: MERc829ca2ce4b0fa0c96a9c904d31a7 (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
February 17, 1974 Above, Julson, left, and Hyland stayed in touch with the engineer and track-side stations via radio-telephone: Picture Magazine; Minneapolis Sunday Tribune ORG XMIT: MIN2017012820265446 (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Clockwise from top: Logs hauled from logging camps were dumped into the hot pond at Redby on the Red Lake Reservation in 1940. (Minneapolis Star Journal)
With the Foshay Tower as a backdrop, a worker labored on U.S. Bank Stadium in 2015. (Jeff Wheeler, Minneapolis Star Tribune)
Iron worker Dick Cassidy looked away (and enjoyed a cigarette) while Paul Davis welded a rod in Minneapolis, 1978. (Bruce Bisping, Star Tribune)
As men went off to fight World War II, women like Theresa Serratore were hired by Butler Brothers Mining Co. in Nashwauk-Keewatin. (Star Journal)
At the Twin Cities Ordnance Plant, workers packed cartridge belts in the 1940s. (Hennepin County Library, Minneapolis Newspaper Photo Collection) (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Father and son Greg Bersie and Gordon Bersie harvest sudan grass on their farm in Delano in 1987. RicHARD Sennott • Star Tribune (The Minnesota Star Tribune)
