A Collection of Photographs and Ephemera Realted to Soulé Iron and Steel Products During WW2

Los Angeles, California: Soulé Steel/Rode Photo Services/Gabriel Moulin Studios, 1943. 24 10" x 8" black and white photographs showing Soulé production facilities and production lines [with] three employee induction leaflets, and a marked up Rand McNally single sheet map of California showing Soulé offices and catchment areas. Some soiling to versos of some images, studio stamps and captions to verso present on a number of photographs, occasional typewritten location labels to lower right corners of a couple of images. All pieces in very good or better condition.

Soulé Steel, a prominent steel and ironwork producer, was founded in 1911 by Edward Soulé, a entrepreneurial fellow who witnessed the damage caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and immediately cornered the market in the production of rebar and steel for the great rebuilding effort. At its height the company had 9 complete fabrication shops, facilties for the building of steel buildings, separate locations for the production of steel doors and windows, and a sizeable steel mill in Long Beach CA. They provided reinforcement and pilings for the Golden Gate Bridge, the Space Needle, several stadia, and contributed an enormous amount of steel required for the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam. Soulé remained a family run business until finally closing its doors in 1986. During WW2, aside from the contribution of sheet steel and rebar to military efforts, Soulé built landing craft for the US (designated LCM 3 and LCM 6/Landing Craft Mechanized, the characteristic landing craft used in the D-Day Landings and the Pacific Theatre) as well as a number of other small military lighters and other marine vessels including seaplane Wrecking Derricks; quite a number of wartime Soulé craft were in service during and beyond the Vietnam War. Companies like Soulé were of paramount importance to the US war effort, and were a vital part of the Home Front mobilization, employing in their various plants a legion of new workers, many of them women and migrants, who were drafted in from all parts of the US.
The purpose of the photographs is clearly internal, some have "not for distribution" stamps to verso, but for what purpose, other than to provide a record, is unclear. The accompanying employee leaflets, issued in 1943 to a Louis Urban (employee #1269) are entitled "Your Job at Soulé" outlining duties and responsibilities, the history of the company, management policies, and detailing the products manufactured, along with two supplementary pamphlets in a pocket at the back of the 24pp. manual intended for workers specifically employed at the San Francisco plant. Soulé had major plants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle, with smaller offices and facilities in places like Fresno, Sacramento, and Oakland, several of which feature in the photographs. The photographs depict the shop floor, production lines, external shots showing the sheer size of the facilties, assembly sheds, and some of the regional offices etc. All of the Soulé facilties, and most of the company's legacy, has now gone; small collections like this often provide vital detail in attempting to piece together the history of the US's 20th century industrial ascendence.