"I was livin’ on the farm with my mother and father in South Haven, then my cousin got me and my brother jobs at the Clarage foundry here in Kalamazoo. We work mostly in the yard, loading and unloading train cars for the foundry. Sometimes I get to help pour the hot liquid metal into molds. It’s a dirty job and can get awfully hot, but I’m glad to be in the city workin’. It's regular pay -- I get 69 cents a day."
-Floyd Dungill, Black male, age 16
Captions: young men in front of foundry, circa 1900 (Wisconsin Historical Society collection); foundry worker, circa 1900 (Library of Congress collection); Kalamazoo Foundry Company assembly bay in foundry yard, circa 1900 (KVM collection).
To find more historic photographs and artifacts related to foundries in Kalamazoo, visit KVM's searchable collections database.