Interview with Herman Landrock, 11/4/74, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tell me how you first came to work for the company.

Transcription

1 This is an interview with Herman P. Landrock for In the Age of Steel: Oral Histories from Bethlehem Pennsylvania. The interview was conducted by Roger D. Simon on November 4, 1974 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 00:00:00 Interview with Herman Landrock, 11/4/74, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Tell me how you first came to work for the company. Well, I arrived in New York in 1906, July 1906, and, of course, the first few days in New York I didn t look around for work until I saw a piece in the German paper where Bethlehem Steel Company, who then had an office on Nassau Street [New York, New York], was looking for experienced mechanics. I had learned my trade in the Krupp plant 1. That was at that time the biggest ordnance plant in the world, I think. Where was that? Essen [Germany]. That s where I served my apprenticeship. Of course, then when I came over here and saw the ad for Bethlehem Steel wanting men, I applied at their office. When they found that I served apprenticeship in the Krupp plant, I was hired on the spot. They gave me then with eight other fellows that we were hired tickets to Bethlehem here. So on November 15, 1906, I arrived in Bethlehem here, and that was down at the old Lehigh Valley station 2, which we used to call Noah s Ark. It was a very dismal rainy evening, and when we got off the train and stood on the platform, boys looked around and said, What kind of a dump did we get into here? So they took a vote, and they decided to go back to New York. They didn t want no part of the town. Did you know these others that you were with? No. Just on the train? Just, right, just on the train. Well, they decided to sleep in the station till the next New York train comes along to go back. One of the other fellows and myself, we just didn t have enough money to get back, and so we decided we d stay long enough till we get enough money to go back to New York. Well, I m still here. 1 A German company famous for its steel production. 2 The Lehigh valley railroad was a railroad that was built in the northeastern United States whose main function was to haul anthracite coal.

2 How old were you then, when you came here? A little over 17. Why did you leave Germany? Well, a number of things. First of all, I was in the compulsory service in the German Navy, and that is nothing to crow about. So when I came over here, of course, we had shore leave, and I got lost in New York. You got lost in New York? Was it pretty unpleasant in the German Navy in those days? It was. It s a lot different than the American Navy. But the Army or Navy was quite a deal. In particular under the emperor, it was a different system. So when I found I missed my boat, one of the cops down at Battery Park [New York, New York] said, You want me to call there? There was about five or six of us that missed it, that had got back too late. So he said, You want us to call the Coast Guard? They fly you out or get you out, or if you like to stay here, why, we can help you. Well, we all decided we d like to stay here. I had nothing else over there. So he gave me an address in Glendale, Long Island, a friend of his who had a hotel, to go out and see him. He ll take care of it. So I went out to that place, a family named Lury (sp?), owned the National Hotel (inaudible) Long Island, Glendale, and after I told him my story, he said, Well, the best thing we can do, we go tomorrow morning over to the courthouse in Jamaica, which was the county seat of that, and we see John Cressell 3 (?), who was the borough president, and we get you your first citizenship paper. 00:04:53 So on my second day in New York, I got my first citizen paper. Then, of course, I helped around the hotel a little bit here and there to earn my keep for a couple weeks til jobs turned up. When I saw that in New York, why, I went up and applied and got a job and shipped to Bethlehem. So on the 16th of November, the next day, with my little two bucks in my (inaudible), what I had accumulated, I walked in the plant. The first particular first comical thing is I couldn t talk a work of English. I had learned one word, but I wouldn t say it on here. The ticket that they had given me was for Number 6 machine shop 4. Well, I went over to Number 6 machine shop when I came in the plant. On the gate was a patrolman, a Bethlehem cop. They didn t many then. But he was a big Austrian, and he looked just like 3 Project staff were unable to identify this person. 4 Refers to Coke Oven Battery No. 5 in which ovens were used for the conversion of coal into coke.

3 (inaudible) (laughter) Steinberger (?). When he looked at my ticket, he says, That big building over there, that s Number Six. So I went over. Well, I waited around about for an hour, and then finally a big tall fellow came along that told me he was the superintendent 5. I understood afterwards his name was West. And he started jabbering in English to me, which I didn t understand. So da-da-da-da he goes, and goes off. So one of the foremen came over who talked Pennsylvania Dutch 6, and he says, Well, he can t talk to you, he can t use you. So I was fired before I got started. So I went back out to the gate, and the old patrolman, he says, What s the matter? Because he talked Dutch to me and German. I told him, That superintendent can t talk to me, so he told me he s got no job for me. He says, I have another friend in here. I think he can use you. Wrote me out a slip and he says, Now, you go down that alley that s alongside Central Tool 7, and the end where you hit the railroad tracks, turn right till you see a building with a loading platform. You go around that building and you see a little entrance in there, with some little (inaudible) piece in it. That s what they had in the plant in those days, and I still have a picture of it that I took at that time later on when I was employed. And he says, Give them this slip. So I went in the door. Young fellow there started talking English to me, and he says (Pennsylvania German phrase). Yeh. He talked Pennsylvania Dutch. So he just yells back to the back room, Hey, Dan, friend of yours to see you here. Out came a big tall fellow, black bowler hat, and he gave him the slip. He came over, he says, Sprechs (?) Deutsch [do you speak German] Yes. No English? No. He looked over the tables, he says, Where d you learn your trade? I says, Krupp in Essen. He goes, Well, we want you. So he took me down to the Central Machine Shop where they worked on the guns, Navy guns. They worked on all sizes, one-pounders, three-pounders, five-pounders, three-inch, 75-millimeter, seven-inch naval landing guns, and nine-inch disappearing guns, and twelve-inch guns for the Argentine Navy for the three battleships they were building up in Boston that time. Put me on the job on a bench and gave me a job. Nobody said I was hired. The foreman 8 that came there talked Dutch, and he said, That s your place here, at a bench with four fellows, two on that side, one over here, and this was Andy Weiss 9 (?). He gave me a job, a firing lock for a twelve-inch gun, the parts for it. I got to fit all those things together, and he showed me a finished one, how it had to work. 5 A person in management charged with overseeing or directing an organization. 6 Refers to emigrants and the descendants of emigrants from southwestern Germany and Switzerland who settled in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries. [link] 7 Manufactured all kinds of small tools, such as milling cutters, reamers, drills, punches, rivet sets, jigs, etc., principally for the use of the various Bethlehem plants and shipyards. 8 A workman who supervises a group of workers, especially in a factory. 9 Project staff were unable to identify this person.

4 A firing lock 10. The firing lock, yes, it goes inside a breech block 11. It s the thing that when it gets released, supposed to spring out and fires the gun. This was put together by hand? In those days, I had no jigs (inaudible). It was all laid out on layout tables, and then it was machined to the lines, which were drawn in with a (inaudible) gauge. Then the other bench was fitted with files and scrapers to get together. Now he said to me, Take all the time you want. This is your first job. If you do a good job, you got a job. If you don t, why, you re finished. I d say the other three fellows around the bench, one was an Englishman, one was a Hungarian, the other one was a Jewish fellow. The Hungarian and the Jewish fellow spoke German, and they started explaining things to me and they helped me out with tools, which I didn t have at that time for that particular job. A man was supposed to have his own tools? Oh, yes, in those days he did. The tools I had weren t anywhere sufficient for it. I had a hacksaw, I had a chisel, a pair of calipers, and a combination square, and that was it. That was (inaudible). So they watched me a little bit and gave me advice, helped me out with tools, and I worked about a week on that thing. In that week, nobody came near me, nobody told me I was hired, nobody told me what pay I was going to get. Even the timekeepers that went around, they passed me by. Didn t write down your name on a slip of paper or nothing? Nothing. So when I had the piece finished, the other fellows on the bench, they tried it out and says, That s a good job. So I took it over to the foreman I had. He tried it out and he whistled. He says, Wait till Reese sees that. Reese was the general foreman, Reese Morgan 12. Reese Morgan? 10 A removable part of the firing mechanism in some weapons, incorporating the firing pin and the mechanism which drives it against the primer. [link] 11 The metal part that closes the breech end of the barrel of a breechloading gun and that is removed to insert a cartridge and replaced before firing. [link] 12 Project staff were unable to identify this person.

5 Yes. His son later became superintendent of the shop. They re both gone now. He looked at it, he whistled, he says, What till Reese sees that. So he took it over and the general foreman and the assistant superintendent stood together there in a huddle and tried this thing out. Reese took the thing apart. He always smoked a cigar, took the cigar and popped the ashes in it and put it together again and kept on working it, took it out and blew it out and he got a smile from ear to ear. (inaudible). Reese spoke English, of course, and they translated for me, He wants to see your tools. I opened up my little box, he looked through it, he said to him, They re good blacksmith tools. Get some decent tools and you re hired. So as it happened, one of those fellows, the Jewish fellow, he was representative for the (inaudible) committee. When a fellow on the bench beckoned me, an Englishman, he was Barton (?). He was the representative for the (inaudible) shop committee. 00:13:52 These are tool companies? Tool companies. They got together and they made out a list of what I would need to begin with, a set of mics [micrometers] up to two and three inches, at least, and tri-square, graduated scales, graduated to (inaudible) inch, a few other things. By the time they added this all up, it came to about $200, and I damn near fainted. I said, I ain t got no money. He said, The boss says you re hired. That s all right. We get the tools, and every payday you can pay us one week him, the other week John (?), what you can afford. We ll work it out. So they got me some tools, I ve still got them in my box. In those days, you took care of yourself. So I was hired, and then the boss came over and says, Why, it s a (inaudible) job. We re going to start you at the top rate, 22 cents an hour. Twenty-two cents an hour. That was top. At that time, the rates were anywhere from 17 cents up to 25. So I started at 22 cents an hour, and the same day, that afternoon, the timekeeper came along. (inaudible)? Yeh. Okay. He said, I ll be checking on you every day. I was on the payroll then. So I worked on the bench pretty close to two years. From the bench they put me on the assembly on the floor fitting breach mechanisms together, putting firing locks in it and so on. Then in 1909, in the meantime, I had several raises and brought it up to 25 cents an hour, and in 1909 I got a promotion. It was my first foreman job in the plant, foreman of those big layout tables where they laid out. I was one of the few men that knew how to read and figure blueprints. Most of the boys here didn t know it. Of course, over there we learned it in the Polytechnic Institute 13, mechanics of figuring strengthening materials and making prints, making drawings to scale and 13 Likely refers to Virginia Polytechnic Institute which is a public university located in Blacksburg, Virginia.

6 so on. There wasn t very many there that do that. So I was made foreman. I had charge of four big tables, two men at each table, and that went on til from there I started to take summer course, evening course, lessons at Lehigh 14. In engineering? In engineering, yeh, because I couldn t afford a semester there. Let me ask you a question here now. You were about 20 years old in 1909 and you were a foreman. Yes. Were most of the men under you older than you were? Oh, yes, all of them were older than I. 00:16:36 Did they resent that? Did you feel uncomfortable? (recording paused) So I was the foreman at the tables, and of course in my spare time, Lehigh gave summer courses and evening courses. I took them in. I also took some of the Penn State 15 special courses that (inaudible) have in ferrous metallurgy 16. About two years later, the superintendent came down one day and he says, I got a call from John (inaudible). That was the chief engineer. He says he heard about you, you doing so good up there in school. He says he needs a few more draftsmen 17. How would you like to go up there? (inaudible) what me to do, so I got in Engineering Department first as a tracer, making tracings. (inaudible) (recording paused) So I was put in the Ordnance Department 18 up there, ordnance engineer. Jim Matusen 19 (sp?) was the Chief of Ordnance. First I was started on the bench in (inaudible) making tracings. Then they found out I had a good handwriting and they put me on lettering drawings. There only was hand labels, and a lot of those fellows made 14 Lehigh University is a private, four year university located in Bethlehem PA. 15 Penn State is a public research university with locations throughout Pennsylvania. 16 The science that deals with materials that have a great deal of iron in them. 17 Translates a designer's ideas into a finished picture using drawing and drafting skills. 18 Manufactured guns, shells, etc. for national defense. 19 Project staff were unable to identify this person.

7 (inaudible) labels. So usually there was some half-decent (inaudible) lettering the (inaudible) drawings. That went on for a while, and then they put me in as detail, (inaudible), made sketches and drawings, (inaudible), had to work them out in scale or full size, whichever was required, and I was that for about a year in that. In the meantime, I had joined the 8 th Battery of the National Guard 20, and when the First World War came along, why, off we went, first down to Texas and then went overseas. As a matter of fact, I had married in the meantime. I didn t get overseas; I was kept here. But back in the engineering I went, and was transferred over to what used to be Brodhead the old shipbuilding 21. I don t know whether you remember that. No, I don t. It s where the Lehigh parking lot is now, (inaudible) High School. There used to be a big wooden building. Shipbuilding, it was called, down to Bethlehem. That s where they had the Ordnance Engineering Department. There I got in designing. First job that I was put on was designing a section of the 42-inch slabbing mill 22 for Sparrows Point 23. Each section (inaudible) man was given an assignment. Is that your phone now? No. So that went along until the First World War came along. One of the general superintendents 24 of the plant was looking for a number of men to go with him to establish a 75-millimeter gun plant in Rochester [NewYork]. Where? Rochester. For Bethlehem Steel? 20 A reserve military force in which members are active but also hold civilian jobs. 21 This refers to the shipbuilding office owned by Bethlehem Steel that was located at the corner of Brodhead and Packer Avenue in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 22 A high-output rolling mill designed for the pressure shaping of large ingots weighing up to 45 tons into large, flat billets, called slabs. [link] 23 Located in Baltimore County, Maryland, this industrial complex owned by Bethlehem Steel was known for shipbuilding and steelmaking. 24 A person in management charged with overseeing or directing an organization.

8 00:19:14 00:19:58 Yes. Well, the whole crew was Bethlehem Steel men, but they worked in the Bethlehem unit of the Navy. So a number of my men, including my foreman 25, took the job and they wanted me to go along, so I went along. That s when I left the Steel and went up to Rochester to the Symington-Anderson Company 26. Anderson was the general foreman of the Bethlehem plant, and Symington was the father of the present Senator Symington 27. He had a big gun contract for 75-millimeter guns. So I was up there in Rochester about four or five years, and then one day one of the vice presidents came through and he said, How d you like to go back to Bethlehem? Well, my wife always had been homesick. She was a Bethlehem girl. They made me a good offer, a better offer than I had. Then they closed down and I came back to Bethlehem, and back in Engineering. That went on. From Engineering I got back in the plant again. Where did you work in the plant? Well, the last number of years I was Plating Engineer 28 and (inaudible). I was all over the plant, from the (inaudible) mills to the coke ovens 29. It was in the 20 s [1920] that you came back? In the late 20 s, 28 [1928]. You d been in Rochester all that time? Yeh. Then when did you get back into plant operations? In 28 [1928]. 25 A workman who supervises a group of workers, especially in a factory. 26 A steel plant located in Rochester, New York that was owned and operated by railroad magnate T.H. Symington and former Bethlehem Steel employee M.H. Anderson, who served as the company's vice-president. 27 Likely refers to William Stuart Symington who was a Democratic United States Senator from Missouri from 1953 to Responsible for coating a material with a hard, non-porous substance in order to increase durability. 29 Ovens used for the conversion of coal into coke by heating the coal in the absence of air so as to distill the volatile ingredients.

9 When you came back. Then, of course, I held different jobs throughout the plant, Central Tool 30. I (inaudible) plating operations (inaudible) from MIT 31. Started a pilot plant, then started a plating room down at the plant, and I was in charge of that when I retired. The plating room? Yes. When did you retire? Fifty-nine [1959]. I was 70 then. At 70 in :21:54 Yes. How did the Depression affect you and the plant? It never did. There were several strikes that I went through. I was one of the men that was constantly kept on. They gave us we were just locked in and we had minor assignments there, like watchmen and so on, to go to the different shops. Each one had an assignment there and see that everything was normal, no fire broke out, or nothing else. I always worked. The company paid me real fine. I never had to ask for a raise. They came along automatically. Promotions came along. When my boys finished and went in, they (inaudible) learned a trade down at the plant. I got them in. I told them, Just remember one thing. The butter on your bread comes from the company, your paycheck. You may get orders you think are corny. If you have any doubts about it, talk to your superior. If he says that s what they want, you better do it. You do that, the company will take care of you. You take care of the company. All of 30 Manufactured all kinds of small tools, such as milling cutters, reamers, drills, punches, rivet sets, jigs, etc., principally for the use of the various Bethlehem plants and shipyards. 31 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research institute located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

10 my sons are college graduates, one is now chief (inaudible) of the (inaudible) Division (inaudible), and the other one was (inaudible) Department (inaudible), and he retired last month. 00:24:34 No kidding. Thank goodness. Yeh, went up to (inaudible), and he s having the time of Riley. That s great. That s great. But when I was in Polytechnic Institute (inaudible), the boss we had, he always used to tell us, Never be idle. Idle hand makes trouble. Besides that, the people that get ahead in life are the ones that keeping busy, not lay in bed sleeping. Another old foreman I had used to say, Don t (inaudible). And that s the way we were brought up and that s the way I m going. That s one reason (inaudible). I wouldn t have to work, but I d be dead and buried if I didn t have that job. Keeps me going. We are busy. I can see, yes. Do you think you could compare what it was like in the German Krupp Works with what it was like in Bethlehem when you came? That was a long while ago, you know. Sure. At that time, the Krupp plant, in their systems, was ahead of what I found here in Bethlehem. Here they were still laying out (inaudible) gauges and so on, (inaudible) when in Krupp already in my years when I was apprentice, why, they had jigs and fixtures made for certain parts that were mass produced, and it had to be fitted in there, and then they just were sent out or put in stock and they fitted no matter what or when. Now, when we built something here that was (inaudible) for a certain gun, fitted for a certain gun, you couldn t exchange it with any other. Of course, now since those days, why, (inaudible) and so on (inaudible), but it s made that one fits the whole line, but it wasn t that way in Were the salaries better in Krupp?

11 No. No, of course there was a big difference in the mark and the dollar. As a matter of fact, as apprentice, we didn t get anything. The first year, my father had to pay so much. So you could work there. Yes. He worked there too? No. He had his own job. He had to pay the first year. The second year, he didn t have to pay anything, but we didn t get any salary as apprentice boys. The 3rd year, we used to get about what amounts to 25 cents a month. A month? A month, yes. Of course, a quarter went a lot farther than here. But if you stayed, you don t think you would have been making 22 cents an hour like you made when you started at Bethlehem? No, no. Even maybe years later. When I was young, some of my school chums that I went to school with, a couple of them are alive yet, what I was making here in those days, $50 a week, earlier foreman days, why, which amounted in German marks about 200 marks, they were getting about 75 to 80 marks a month and they thought it was good. For the way the living was over there, it was. In the German plant, I guess almost everybody was a German, but here you had the Hungarians and the Germans and the English and Poles and such. Did that make it harder, do you think? No. As a matter of fact, the acquaintances I made, everybody helped, and it made it easier. Over in the other country, we had more of a caste system. The older ones were better than the younger ones, and the longer he was in the plant, no matter how ignorant he was, why, he was top dog. That s the caste system over there. Was there tension here between the different ethnic groups?

12 There was no tensions over there. Tension. Tension. Here, between the Poles and the Pennsylvania Dutch 32 or the English? No. I never found that. I found in Number Two shop 33, where I started, the (inaudible) Engineering Department, nobody asked where you came from, what you were. I found things went very smoothly here, as long as you followed the rules. But I made quite a few friends because I joined, from the advice of one of my foremen, Masonic Order 34, which I joined in 1912, and that s been a big education to me. You say on the advice of one of your foremen. Sort of to get ahead and meet good people or just for the fun? To make the right kinds of acquaintances, yes. I sure did. It helped an awful lot wherever I went. I think it s one of the best moves I made in my life. Is that so? Yes. Of course, we re not talking about Masons here, but the objectives of Masonry, if you follow them, they ll help you in your conduct and conduct with your fellow men. I ve made friends all over and I ve been around quite a bit. So I have no regrets there. I d do it over again. I d work for the steel company again. You put in a 12-hour day in those days, I guess. In those days, well, we put in ten hours. Ten hours in your shop. Yes. Over in Germany, we put in 12-hour days. In some departments here, didn t they put in 12 in the furnaces? 32 Refers to emigrants and the descendants of emigrants from southwestern Germany and Switzerland who settled in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries. 33 Built in 1890 and was the largest machine shop in Bethlehem Steel covering 363,290 square feet with 159 production machines. 34 This refers to the oldest fraternity in the world. It was known for being particularly secretive.

13 00:30:33 Yes, that was in the furnaces and the rolling mills and (inaudible). But in machine shop, we had ten-hour days, and in years it came down to eight a day. Did you feel things changed a lot after the union came in? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Shut it off. You don t want to No. (recording paused) I had money, and one of the landlords where I was boarding then You went to a boarding house when you first came. It was recommended by the old (inaudible) down there, who I should see. Well, he took me down to (inaudible) store. (Inaudible). You know (inaudible). Yes. Well, old man (inaudible) he was a real honest-to-goodness gentleman. So he asked me where I was born, when I had come over, what I was doing, and then he says, All right. We will fit you with a suit, underwear, shirts, socks, collar, tie, hat, whatever you need. I will give you a slip to a friend of mine for shoes, which was to Alexi s. And believe it or not, that was The suit was $15 and it was a very good suit. I wore it for a few years. Shirts, underwear, collars, everything came to not quite $5, and the first pair of shoes I got were $2.50 for a pair of Oxfords, and they lasted quite a while. Nowadays, you got to pay $25 for a pair of shoes and they go to pieces in six to nine months, most of them, and the shoe you wouldn t even resole them. Did you live in a rooming house until you got married? Yes. Yes, I first lived,, for the, Adams Street, Adams and 4th Street [Bethlehem, Pennsylvania]. But later on, down the plant there were a couple of men, couple of boys, they were apprentices that worked in the same department where I

14 was, and one of them says, Why don t you come out to us? We have extra bedroom. I think my mother would like that too. Her name was Hope, and he was a weighmaster in that little station underneath the 4th Street Bridge. Weighmaster 35? 00:33:45 Yeh, for the company. So I went out there and I got a room with them. They had two boys that were about my age and so on and it was out on the heights on East 3rd Street. I was living out there for a number of years till I got acquainted with the girl that s now my wife. My brother, my younger brother, he came to Bethlehem and we had him come after I was over a while. Did you send him money? I sent him money, yes. I got him a job down at Steel and he got in the Electrical Department. Of course, he used to board same way, he got the family to board with, men that worked in the Electrical Department with him. And that family had three boys, two of which worked down in the shop, one in Number Two shop 36 and one in Number Six 37, and two girls. When I used to see the brother, then, of course, I was (inaudible) and I took a shine to the girl and took her out a few times. One day she said to me, How about coming round to church tomorrow? (Inaudible). So they took me along to Fritz Memorial Methodist Church up on Packer and Montclair [Bethlehem, Pennsylvania]. They were all very friendly there, so next week I went again. The pastor came to see me, Reverend (inaudible), I liked it all right. Want to join? I said, I would like to, but, you see, I m Lutheran. Well, he says, tell me something. Do the Lutherans have a different God than the Methodists have. Well, I said, I don t think so, I think there s only one. All right. If you believe in him, you can join an Affirmation of Faith. So I joined Fritz Church on an Affirmation of Faith. That girl was singing in the choir. We used to start going steady, and one nice day we got married, and last January we had our 60th wedding anniversary. No kidding. 60. And if I was 60 years younger and ready to get married again, I d pick the same girl. I was lucky I got a good one. 35 Responsible for weighing the pieces put into the open heath furnace. 36 Built in 1890 and was the largest machine shop in BSCORP covering 363,290 square feet with 159 production machines. 37 Refers to Coke Oven Battery No. 5 in which ovens were used for the conversion of coal into coke.

15 00:35:45 00:37:17 Terrific. We have two boys doing well, bring them up right, never had trouble with them, so all I can say is the good Lord s been good to me and my family, and I have no regrets. Where did you live after you got married? With the wife s family first for a little while, and then when that deal in Rochester came along, then of course I went up to Rochester (inaudible) and we went to Rochester. When we came back, we got our own room that we rented first, then we built a home and we ve had our own home now for many years. You re still in that house? That s your only home? Well, not in the same one. We built a couple of them since. First we rented a couple, then we built one up on Roosevelt Avenue [Bethlehem, Pennsylvania]. But in the wintertime on the hill when it was icy it was just too (inaudible). Also the car gave a lot of trouble. So we had them build a house down on Broadway [Bethlehem, Pennsylvania] right across from Laubach [Bethlehem, Pennsylvania] on the (inaudible) there, and we were there a number of years. As we got older, the Mrs., of course, she was getting tired of too much housework, so we decided we d build one more. That s the one we re living in now, right up on the next corner here, 590 Frederick Street. We made that (inaudible) one floor. That s nice. We ve been in that house now sixteen years. We built it sixteen years ago, had it built. Let me go back to the plant a little bit. Did the technological changes make things a lot easier? You talked about the stuff with the guns. Oh, yes. Yes, that is one of the things, (inaudible) experience and technology. (Inaudible) Between what I learned at Lehigh and Penn State and what I learned MIT from (inaudible), it always gave me more experience and better insight and (inaudible) promotion that I never had to look for or ask for. It just came along.

16 Did you feel when you had an idea for doing something more efficiently, you could pass it on? Was there a lot of incentive for that? There was, and I had quite a few developments made, especially during the Second World War here when I was Chief Tool Engineer 38 of the company in the Ordnance Division 39. Quite a few ideas (inaudible) you see they re the same, go ahead. (Inaudible) promotion. So, I can t complain. You were in the Plating Department? The (inaudible) head of the Plating Department. I was the Head Plating Engineer. Was that alloy plating or what kind? Everything. We plated copper, zinc, tin, standard (inaudible), hard industrial (inaudible). That hard industrial (inaudible) was the (inaudible) process that was developed by Dr. (inaudible) at MIT, and he picked me out, I had a plan to do (inaudible). So I started a pilot plan, and then when that worked out, we picked the box (?) out and we started a plating booth, which is still in operation down there. 00:39:37 Was it harder to be a foreman recently than it was, you think, when you started? You were a foreman as early as It s tougher now. A foreman is a farce to the union because the union, the average union man, he can (inaudible) off and get by with it, and if the foreman as much as raises his voice or (inaudible) the shop steward, they just (inaudible). The foreman really has damn little authority down there now. In our days, the foreman was really a foreman. (inaudible) what was going to be done was going to be done. But nowadays, you can t even criticize a man for doing a wrong job or (inaudible). (Inaudible) go to the shop steward 40 (inaudible) grievance committee you get up before a committee of superintendents and union members, with union men in and superintendents, you just get a dirty end of the stick. (Inaudible). So it s a lot harder to do. 38 Project staff were unable to identify this job. 39 Manufactured guns, shells, etc. for national defense. 40 A position held voluntarily in which an employee monitors and enforces agreements made by the union with management.

17 00:41:31 Yes. What about the Second World War. Was that a hectic time? Was it a lot harder during the war? No. I was in charge of tooling then, and it was my job to see that all the different shops that were in war operations were supplied with the tools. No difficulties there. There was more people there, and, of course Were there any women in your department during the war? Yeh, they had quite a few there. Did that make it harder to It does. First of all, it cuts on the language time in the department quite a bit. Maybe that was good. I don t know. It was good, yeh. But some of them (inaudible) more than the men. (laughter) Some were very good and some weren t. Some of the men got into trouble, which didn t help them any. I can say I didn t have any trouble there because I just didn t bother with them. But they worked for you. You had some women working for you. I had foremen under me. I had a man in each shop of which I had charge of tooling, and of course all I had done (inaudible) my office then (inaudible), tell me what was needed here and there, and we made a schedule. Then I told them what had to be looked at. You were the supervisor. Yeah, and they just went out, each man to his shop and took care of it. There weren t any women foremen, were there?

18 No. Yes, there was in the power plant and in the fuse plant and the shell plant. There was women foremen. Do you think they made out all right? Did they only supervise women? Do you know women foremen who supervised any men? That I don t know. I don t think so. I think those women that were supervisors were usually in charge of Women. But it wasn t a problem for you? No. Or for your foremen? No problem. But they didn t stay after the war too much. No. The company got (inaudible). A few times that we got (inaudible) what was there, not in my department (inaudible) fellows got mixed up with the women that were just too bad and the company just fired them. Oh, they did? (inaudible) mixed up anyway (inaudible). Both of them? Yes. 00:44:01 Do you remember, before the union came in, the Employee Representation Plan 41? Yes. I was a part of (inaudible). I was on the committee (inaudible). 41 A plan in which employees were able to file grievances and were allowed to discuss problems with employers.

19 00:46:58 Were you a representative? Steward. How did that work out? Did everybody feel it was a company-run group? No, I don t think so. As a matter of fact, if a man had a grievance and so on, and we felt it was right, then we took it to the superintendent, and the superintendent, the foremen, the men got together. I know in a few cases that I was tied up with, why, the company bent over backwards. There was never any trouble there, no trouble about raises or so on. There was very little trouble about fellows doing sloppy work because the mechanics, they had price in their work. They knew better. By the time I got to be a foreman, I had over a thousand dollars worth of tools in my box, and I ve got the box here yet with some of the tools in. But you were an elected representative of the workers? We weren t elected, the men pick one out, each group. If something came up, they just picked one (inaudible). You represented. So you think it worked pretty well at the time? I think it worked better than what (inaudible). Far better. Do you think workers were reluctant to bring a grievance because it was the company? No. If a fellow thought something was wrong, he just talked to his representative in the gang and the questions was, What you going to do about it? Well, we used to talk among ourselves and our representatives and if we found there was justification, we took it up with the (recording paused) I don t know of any case where everything wasn t settled and the fellow wasn t satisfied. Of course, there was a couple of cases there we could not (inaudible). The man was totally wrong, you know, and if he wouldn t accept the position, why, (inaudible) to quit, go. But I think the company system was a lot fairer and better than the present union system. That s very interesting. During the Depression, did a lot of men in the company lose their jobs? Was the company hit very hard by the Depression in the early 30 s?

20 A lot of the men were let go, a lot of people let go. That s one of the things now with the union. When things go, they have to keep seniority. Whether they re any good or not doesn t make any difference. The way it was in the old system, the fellows who were consistently the best workers were the ones kept. Those fellows that weren t quite up on it, why, they were laid off. Were you ever worried about being laid off? No. It never was that bad? As a matter of fact, there were times (inaudible) came up to strike I asked to stay in. I don t mean about strikes. I just mean the Depression, the hard times. No. No trouble at all there. I never was out of work at the plant. I look at it that way. I was getting my pay from there, I done my work the best way I knew how, I played fair with the company, the company played fair with me, and I think the same thing holds true today. If a man keeps his nose clean and tends to do his business, the company looks out after him, looks out for him. 00:48:37 Did you ever meet Eugene Grace 42? Oh, yes. I bought his car (inaudible). Did you? (inaudible). No kidding. Yes. 42 Served as the President and then Chairman of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation from 1916 to 1945.

21 What kind of a person Very nice. He was very down to earth. He was very nice. You had to know him Did he know you by name? Oh, yes. He knew a lot of people in the plant? He knew quite a few, yes. I knew Charlie Schwab 43. Did you really? Yes. When I was a machinist working on the floor, he used to come through nights through the plant and see what was going on (inaudible). First couple of times he came through, we didn t know who he was. He asked questions, we answered, and the one of the men at the machine said, Did you know who you was talking to? It was Charlie Schwab. I don t know, maybe you don t remember, but did that make you feel like the company took a real interest in what you were doing? Yes. And it was important work. I always felt that way and I still feel that way today. I meant when somebody like Schwab would walk through or Grace. Did Grace do that kind of thing, too? Did he used to walk through the plant? 43 Charles Schwab was the president of Bethlehem Steel whose leadership made the company the second largest steel producer in the United States.

22 00:49:52 He didn t go through the plant so much. I met him after I had Advanced. (inaudible) got up in the plant. Then I got acquainted with him and his car. I had an old Nash during the war. There was no cars to be had or anything. And of course I used to load tools up in the shop in my, in the truck of the car and take them down to the plant. That didn t help the car any. One day the general manager, R.A. Lewis 44, Eugene Grace, and the Chief Engineer, they came down to the Gun Shop, (inaudible) there I was unloading tools there from the trunk and getting them in. So, he remarked (inaudible) that way. Well, that s the only kind of a trunk I got. Well, not more was said about it. About a year later, the Plant Patrol Chief, he came to me. He says, Herman, would you be interested in a good car? I asked, What kind of a car? He says, Mr. Grace mentioned the other day about you down at the plant, you haul the tools around. He said (inaudible) you could use a car now. It was hard to buy them yet then at that time. This is during World War II. Yeh. So I says, I sure would. Let s go out and see him. So we went over to Prospect Avenue [Bethlehem, Pennsylvania] and Mr. Grace (inaudible). So came in. He says, Are you interested? I said, I sure would. I said, I don t know whether I can afford it or not. You said that? Yeh. Well, he said, How long you been with us? About 33 years. He said, (inaudible) by now. (laughter) Then he turned to his chauffeur and he says (recording paused) You were about to get Mr. Grace s car. So he turned to his chauffeur, says, Hans, how much have you spent on it? The chauffeur said, We just had the engine completely overhauled, the brakes, new brake lining put in, got new tires on it. He pulled some papers out of his pocket. He says, Runs a bit over $800. So Mr. Grace says, Well, how does $800 sound to you? Well, I was dumbstruck. I figured it would come to a couple thousand. It was a special car, there was only ten of them built. 44 R.A. Lewis served as vice-president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation.

23 00:54:20 It was a limousine (Inaudible). I says, I like that. I can get you a certified check tomorrow. Don t worry about it. You think you like it, take good care of it. It s yours. Terrific. So I had a 1938 Special (inaudible) Packard and that was a car. How long did that last? Well, I drove it for about two years, till we got newer cars again. It was expensive to run, about 9 miles to the gallon. I had one experience when we went up to (inaudible) in Canada, I had made reservations and they had given me a night rate of $20 double occupancy in the room. And I pulled up in the Packard and the bellhops (inaudible) and the (inaudible) says, I m sorry, the $20 rooms are all taken. We have some good $30 and $40 rooms left. He thought you could afford better. (laughs) I said, No thanks. I m going to find something else. (inaudible) into a motel. But that s what it does. It was a beautiful-looking car. I ve got pictures of it yet. Let me ask you, did you ever want to go back to Germany to visit or to live? No. Did you ever go back? No. All my friends are here, all my connections are here. Your family? Yes. Most of my technical education I got here. There was nothing that I lost over there. I have a few cousins and friends. Two years after, we had a brother come over, we had a sister come over, and the last boat that left Rotterdam

24 [Netherlands] for America, we had our mother come over. She landed here in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve We buried her about two years ago; she was just two months shy of 101. Terrific. And she wasn t even sick the day she died. Still had black hair. She was happy and not nostalgic for No. She had her children here with her. What had your father done? You said he wasn t in the He was a plant manager for an English concern, Sterling Company, Sterling Limited, a spinning mill. They had plants all over Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, and he was sent over to Leipzig, to the Leipzig mill. From Leipzig [Germany] they sent him over to start a new mill in Merseburg [Germany]. That s used to be it s now (inaudible) on the Saale River, a beautiful little town. That s where I was born. But Father got on a hunting trip and accidents do happen, and he was a young man and he died. So the mother came over, brought along my younger brother who came also with us up to the gun plant in Rochester. When the plant shut down, he went to Eastman Kodak as a tool maker. He developed several patents on shuttles, and he was made foreman, then he was made superintendent of the Rochester plant. In 35 [1935] he was made Vice President in charge of production. In 1954 he retired as Vice President of Production of Rochester and Rhode Island (?) plant. He lives up in Rochester, in Pittsburgh (?). Of course, a sister of mine, she is a widow now. She married a German fellow, a very nice fellow too, and she lives on Lake Success, Long Island [New York]. The niece of mine, (inaudible), my niece, she married a (inaudible) wealthy man in the Philippines and they live out in the Philippines. 00:57:33 Wow. That s exotic. He s the (inaudible) plants (inaudible). Did you feel that you and your own advancement, did you feel that you got about as far as you wanted to, were you satisfied?

25 I got farther than I ever figured I d get. Did you? Yes. I got farther than I ever figured I would get. I figured being a foreman was something. When I got engineer s position, Plant Engineer, Chief Engineer, Plating Engineer of the plant, why, I had supervisory positions there that I had never dreamed of. I see you kept up your education. In 1940 you Yeh, (inaudible) metallurgy. From Penn State. So you continued to keep up with the technology. Did the company encourage you to go to school? Oh, yes. Did they pay your tuition? Yes. No tuition at Penn State. No. The plant manager, Mr. Lewis, who is dead now, when we had staff meetings, he used to say, Some of you fellows want to push up on a little up-to-date chemistry or metallurgy, Penn State is going to start a three-year course. It was twice a week. So I took that in 34 [1934], 35 [1935], and 36 [1936]. That helped. Took some chemistry and ferrous metallurgy there. It still helps me today. So I have no complaints. When I hear fellows (inaudible) today about things, I figure it s their own fault. They don t want to be compatible and get along or want to start on top and go from there and higher, if there is such a thing, especially young kids. (recording paused) So you re pretty satisfied with your career. Absolutely. As I say, I have no regrets. If I had to do things over again, I wouldn t do things any different.

26 01:00:48 One last question, unless you have some thoughts. Can you give me the names of any other people that go back a long time there in town that I could talk to? (recording paused) This is a continuation of an interview with Herman Landrock on June 17, My name is Roger Simon. (recording paused) with the city of Bethlehem and what living here was like. One question, though, I wanted to ask you to follow up from before, you mentioned the Masons you had joined, and you thought that was a very good experience. You didn t really get a chance to tell me why you thought that was a good experience. I sort of wondered about We can get to this, but let s start the way I came to Bethlehem. As you know on the previous, I was hired in New York and came down here. There was about six of us together that came down. When we landed here, at the time the old Lehigh Valley [Pennsylvania] had an old wooden station and we used to call it Noah s Ark. We landed on a November night, I guess, on the 13 th or 14 th of November. It was dark and it was raining pitchforks and it was miserable. You d only see a very few lights around there. Bethlehem was much smaller then. So the men got together and sat on the suitcases, those that had one. I didn t have one. What I had on, that was it, what I wore, and my toolbox. They said, Looks to be a hell of a dump. I don t know. Let s get back to New York. Well, four of them decided to go back on the next (inaudible), on the next train. Two of us, we felt, too, like going back, but we were broke. We couldn t go back. So we decided to go back as soon as we got a couple weeks work in. Of course, you heard from the previous (inaudible). (Inaudible) wound up. Tell me what you thought of the town in the beginning. To begin with, we didn t think anything of it. It used to be called South Bethlehem. It was the outcast of (inaudible), and if it wouldn t have been for Lehigh University it wouldn t have been nothing. But Lehigh wasn t nearly as big as (inaudible) in those days. Streets were not as clean as they are now. Were they paved? Some were. Second Street was (inaudible), right alongside the steel company fences. Now where you go in to the rear entrance (inaudible). It used to be the red-light district. If you didn t walk in the middle of the street, walked along the side (inaudible), you were liable to have lost your head and you had to go inside and get (inaudible) again.

27 (Laughs) A lot of steel workers frequent that? Oh, yes. Yes, that was a wide-open town then, and quite a few bars along there. We always used 3rd Street. That was safer to walk on. But when I came up, I needed a boarding place, and the old plant cop, (inaudible) to Number Two shop, he gave me an address a few blocks away on 4th Street, 4th and Adams Street [Bethlehem, Pennsylvania], with a firm that used to have a boarding house, and they had quite a few Bethlehem Steel boarders. So he wrote me a note and I went up. The people s names was, if I remember right, Fisher. I was taken on, and of course the man was way nice. And so was his wife. And he said, Where is your suitcase, so I got my toolbox. He said, That won t do. (Inaudible) go down tomorrow to Lefowiches (sp?), which was a downtown clothing store. They re out of business now. At the same location at 4th and New? Not 4th and New. 3rd and New. Yeh. At that time, old Mr. Lefowich 45 (sp?) was living yet, a very nice older gentleman. So he took me down there and he asked me where I was born and how long I d been in the country, a number of questions, and about some of the surroundings where I was born. He knew the country out there pretty well. So he says, Well, you got a job, we ll fix you up. I said, I haven t got a job yet. I hope I will have one. Well, he says, I think you ll make out. He says, Germans usually get along pretty well down there. So he got me lined up with a suit, a set of underwear, a shirt, a collar, a necktie, a hat, pair of socks, and gave me order to Alexi s (sp?), who was one of the prominent shoe stores on the 4 th Street for a pair of shoes. Now you ll laugh when I tell you what the total amounted to. Suit and underwear and shirt and everything, $15. Fifteen dollars for everything. In 1906, yes Project staff were unable to identify this person.