Before discovery of gold, and after, canned salmon was the economic backbone of The Alaska Territory until after World War II. Although the largest contributor to Alaska's economy during the first half of the 20th Century, historically little has been written about workers and the conditions they endured producing canned salmon.
Canning salmon in Alaska was dirty work ("Marumina Trabaho") performed mostly by Filipino immigrants from about 1915 through the 1960s. But "dirty work" was also a process in which cannery workers were hired by unscrupulous contractors, encouraged by greedy...
Before discovery of gold, and after, canned salmon was the economic backbone of The Alaska Territory until after World War II. Although the largest...
