‘Gossard Girls’ recounts Upper Peninsula’s trailblazing history

When Phyllis Michael Wong found herself relocating to Marquette to serve as first lady of Northern Michigan University, she had no idea about the revolutionary women from the county’s past — women she’d one day write a book about.

What she soon uncovered was the little known, but vastly important, phenomenom of women who worked at rural factories in Gwinn and Ishpeming, Michigan. Her fascination snowballed as her deep dive turned into a years-long research project that resulted in “We Kept Our Towns Going: The Gossard Girls of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”

In her preface Wong writes: “You will never know what someone is thinking unless you give them a voice.” And the voices she unearthed and preserved tell an uplifting, sometimes humorous, tale of gritty, groundbreaking blue-collar work.

Wong said those jobs provided women with not only discretionary income, but a sense of pride. “The women workers having their own money was ahead of its time,” she said. “The more I delved into it, the more I was curious about the undergarment industry in the Upper Peninsula.”

While serving as the university’s first lady from 2004-2012, Wong initially began researching a local woman who worked for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The union organized garment workers in the Upper Peninsula, including plant workers at the H.W. Gossard Co. in Ishpeming and Gwinn. The two plants employed more than 1,000 workers, mostly women, who worked tirelessly churning out women’s undergarments from 1920-1976, when the last plant closed.

At the end of the day, Wong said she collected more than 100 oral histories. Those conversations serve as the basis for her new lypublished book. After she uncovered the personal stories of these women, Wong said: “I became emotionally attached to the women and it was important that I represented their voices.”

The new book, published back in March by Michigan State University Press, also uncovers how in the 1920s, as the mining industry began to wane in the Upper Peninsula, community leaders began marketing the Western U.P. as a prime location for manufacturing plants. It’s then that Gossard decided to renovate some old buildings in Ishpeming to house the first Gossard location in the Upper Peninsula. Later, another location was added in Gwinn, Michigan, at an old hospital once run by the mining industry.

The jobs at H.W. Gossard were based on piece rates, and the workers toiled at sewing machines for eight-hour days. Surprisingly, the oral histories were less about the drudgery of hard work and more about the women adoring their jobs. The extra money allowed them to better provide for their families and themselves.

Wong’s research paints the H.W. Gossard brand as paternalistic — often sponsoring dances, parties, picnics, baseball teams and, for a time, provided gourmet hot lunches for the women. Certainly, much of that paternalism was used to keep the unions at bay as the ILGWU attempted to organize the workers.

The workers at the two U.P. plants primarily sewed bras that were sold across the United States, including in J. C. Penney and Montgomery Ward catalogs. For many of the women, Gossard was their first job. Many of the workers were younger, including a number of women who lied about their age to work at the plant.

Interviews from many of the youngest workers showed how the older workers served as mentors, and that extended beyond their job — including intimate advice on dating. One worker, Laila Poutanen, told Wong that “working at Gossard provided her with sex education.”

Wong also retells the amusing story of how younger plant workers would sometimes use cloth scraps to make miniature bras. Those custom novelty items were promptly given to their boyfriends to hang from their rearview mirrors.

Overall, most of the women interviewed reported how they loved their jobs and the independence they provided despite the grind of piece work. By the 1970s, most undergarment work moved offshore. Eventually, China produced 60 percent of the world’s bras.

Wong also writes about the stressful but successful strike by Gossard workers in 1949, which she calls “a rare moment in labor history when women led a successful strike to unionize a workplace.”

Gossard was formed in the late 1890s when the founder took advantage of the new front-laced corset, which sold for $25 — an unheard-of price at that time. The company located a branch in Ishpeming in 1920 employing 75 workers and by 1928 were employing 475 workers. Fast forward to 1976, and more than 1,500 women worked in the two plants. According to one worker, the job “provided the bread and butter.”

Wong said in an interview from her home in Massachusetts that “she hopes this inspiring story makes it out of Michigan.”

One thing Wong said she learned in her travels with her husband, who left Northern for the presidency of San Francisco State College (2012-2019), is that “every place is different, and if you want to know a place you have to become part of that place.”