The Detroit Assembly also known as the Cadillac Clark Street

[CassTechGrad]

The Detroit Assembly also known as the Cadillac Clark Street plant during the golden age of Detroit’s automobile history made “The stuff that dreams are made of”. Everybody wanted a Cadillac and those 1950’s models had big fins, leather, air conditioning, and were covered in chrome. They built 142,272 of these 1959 models with the top Fleetwood’s going for almost $10,000 and that was 60 years ago!

One Piece at a Time
Johnny Cash
"Well, I left Kentucky back in forty nine
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on Cadillacs"

[Cincinnati_Kid]

Cool pic !!

[Richard]

There is a company on YouTube called Periscope Films that has complied and categorized a lot of films from the past 1920s and up.

They have lots of assembly line/factory footage and street scenes of Detroit start watching those and it is like spending hours reading the factory threads in the archives here,it is hard to stop.

People think they have it rough today,you would have to be one tough cookie to survive the stuff they did on a daily basis.

[hybridy]

People think they have it rough today,you would have to be one tough cookie to survive the stuff they did on a daily basis.

My parents + grandparents relish the 'simpler' times. The easier times. The better times. Today's society wasn't brought on by the younger generations, they've simply inherited the system handed to them.

Do kids really “have it easy”? I’ve always thought this attitude is flawed and dangerous, but I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly. Everybody seems so confident that it’s ‘easy’ to be a kid in this country, so why aren’t I reassured when I look at my own children? Why do I fear for them so deeply if they are blessed to be born into these ‘easy’ times?

I mean, it seems fair on the surface. Sure, kids get to sit in air conditioned living rooms and watch TV. They eat sugary cereal and drink soda. But ‘easy’? Is it easy to be a child in modern America? No, I don’t think so. They might have a bunch of cool toys, but being a child today is a dangerous proposition. And it’s made ever harder because many adults fundamentally fail to understand kids and what they go through.

You might laugh at the idea, but children have it rough in our society. Like, really, really rough. Our culture is actively hostile to them — probably more so than at any other point in history. They are born, and immediately the world pounces, pulling them in a million directions, selling them a million lies, convincing them to be a million different things — none of them good or true. We vaccinate them against every disease, buckle them into their car seats, teach them not to run near the pool, and we think we are keeping them safe. But it’s their souls that we should be especially protecting, and that’s where we often fail.

Politicians mortgage their future to pay for the luxuries of today, and millions of Americans cheer them on while they do it. Do you know what “unfunded liability” means? It means, in economic terms, “hey junior, this bill is on you, sucker!” It means we’re ordering a feast, stuffing our fat faces, and leaving our kids to pay the tab. We think kids are selfish “me first” little brats, but that title belongs to us. Look at what we’ve done to this country; we barely even give these kids a chance. Where are the people stepping up to make sacrifices today so that future generations won’t be stuck with the debt and bankruptcy caused by our extravagance? Do you hear this voice? I don’t. All I hear is “spend money on ME! NOW!” Me. Now.

https://themattwalshblog.com/easy-no...-have-it-easy/

[Richard]

^ yes I agree the government getting involved in protecting us from our selves may have a traumatic experience on a young child’s life.

Eat dirt,drink from a garden hose,play on the playground with more safety regulations then carter has liver pills,seat belts,riding backwards in the third row station wagon seat,riding in the back of a pick up truck the list goes on but yet we all survived.

I see the look of disappointment on the younger generations when thier IPhone battery is dead,or thier Xbox breaks.

I can only imagine growing up during the dust bowl and having to give everything up in search of food and work,or living through a depression where you did not eat because there was no food and no way to buy it,then standing for hours in line at the soup kitchen.

Or the millions that at age 16 and 17 that signed up during two world wars to go off to a foreign country to die for thier country.

My mother and thier family of 6 lived in a 20x20 tin shack with a dirt floor in the Minnesota winter while her father traded eggs for lumber so he could build the house.

Very few are willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary and then blame society and its shortcomings.

More related to the thread how many 19 year olds that you know are prepared to stand in front of a blast furnace making steel 12 to 14 hours a day,I do not know any.

I do know that I have a lot of the younger generation that come to me for work with zero skills,wanting and expecting twice the prevailing wage like I should be privileged that they would honor me with thier presence,then cannot even put thier phone down long enough to even learn or work.

In Maradona they mine Mica,little villages the entire population everybody goes down in the mine,starting as soon as you can walk and lift a shovel.

They have 60 days to mine 6 tons,that is 60 days 7 days a week 16 hours a day,at the end of the 60 days the buyer comes and loads up the haul,deducts the money that was fronted for thier food that they ate the last 60 days and they collect $7 in wages per month for the 60 days labor.

Mica is that thin wafer board that is used in anything electronic or Eletricial to separate and insulate computer boards,15 pounds of the stuff in every car built,it is in every cell phone and computer etc.

The same exact senario in Africa and mining cobalt.

Imagine advocating for rights while holding a phone or driving a car that a 5 year old toiled in a mine for 14 hours so we could have that privilege.

Yes in comparison the kids of this country have it easy,what we used to call the building of character in a child is now referred to as some form of child abuse.

Back to the thread,you see the pictures of working on the line but unless one has never done it,it looks easy and nobody really gives it a second thought,I always had the thought of,so easy a cave man could do it.

But watching the films,reading the comments etc of those who actually did it one gains a new perspective.

In the old days I would have probabley lasted about 30 seconds before walking away.

[rickbak]

I've been researching some stuff from the pre-Civil War era and it's funny to see newspaper editorials and preachers from the 1850s criticizing American Youth for being too soft. Guess working sun-up to sundown every day on the family farm wasn't enough. It's all relative, I guess.

[Richard]

^ that is a generational right of passage when getting old,it beats discussing bowl movements.

And you get to yell at the young whippersnappers to get off of my grass.

Funny,I was a long haired pot smoking hippy type,nowadays it is cool to be bald and smoke pot,because it brings in state revenue.

[Warrenite84]

My Dad worked there, Fleetwood Assembly, and Conner Stamping from 1953-1988...

[p69rrh51]

The Detroit Assembly also known as the Cadillac Clark Street plant during the golden age of Detroit’s automobile history made “The stuff that dreams are made of”. Everybody wanted a Cadillac and those 1950’s models had big fins, leather, air conditioning, and were covered in chrome. They built 142,272 of these 1959 models with the top Fleetwood’s going for almost $10,000 and that was 60 years ago!

One Piece at a Time
Johnny Cash
"Well, I left Kentucky back in forty nine
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on Cadillacs"

Cadillac was the copy cat pf Virgil Exner's fabulous designs. Chrysler caught Harley Earl asleep at the wheel and those terrible fins were Earl's delusional answer to Exner's designs.

[EastsideAl]

That's a very nice photo. My mother's uncle, in who's house she grew up [[they rented the second floor flat), worked at Cadillac for many years. He was a foreman in final assembly towards the end of his time there. His last year I believe was 1960, so this photo is right on point. He was always extremely proud to say he worked at Cadillac. To the point where his brother, my grandfather, made fun of him.

Apropos of the discussion above, he and my grandfather grew up fatherless [[great-grandpa died of gangrene after a mill accident on Christmas eve) in Pennsylvania. They were from Mennonite farmer families and their uncle would come and pick them up with his wagon at 4:30 AM to go to work in the fields until the sun went down. My grandfather literally never went to school.

They ran away from there as teenagers and drifted around various places doing various jobs for several years, but like so many they came here because this was where you could make a good living wage without much education. They worked hard jobs in hard places [[my great-uncle at Cadillac and my grandfather at Highland Park and Rouge) and saw very hard times during the nadir of the depression. But for them Detroit was paradise.