Vintage Baseball Ladies

[Spike]

Originally Posted by molenick

Here is my one Virginia Brights cabinet and some women's teams.

What a great set of cabinets!

Am in the middle of writing about those Black Stocking & Polka Dot Nine cards. Given the mid-1880s business environment, it appears Allen & Ginter printed a series of card sets featuring ladies as a PR campaign fought on two fronts. Some of that's reflected in the baseball and non-baseball sets they produced.

1. Ginter made a show in the mid-1880s of being the first American tobacco company to hire women as cigarette packagers. I expect this saved them money in wages (compared to men) and helped them maintain profit margins during an era of rising competition from other major tobacco producers.

2. The 1880s saw industry conflict over the use of new, automated cigarette packing machines. Ginter was one of many companies to avoid them and employed over 1000 women to do the job by hand. Competitor Duke & Sons tobacco used machines in secret at first, due to the social stigma of automation. Duke's higher level of production soon allowed them to dominate the American market and brought about a series of mergers/acquisitions that resulted in the American Tobacco Company, circa 1890.

It's known that Ginter distributed a variety of 1886-87 cabinets (and related pack-in sets) featuring women in costume.

Cabinets
- N-UNC Cigarette makers (do these cabinets have an ACC number?)
- H807-1 Black Stocking Nine
- H807-2 Polka Dot Nine
- H807-3 Girl Cyclists
- H807-4 Yacht Club Contestants (not known to me if this subset contains women, just including as part of the H807 series)

Sets
- N46 Cigarette makers
- N48 Lady ballplayers (mix of Polka Dot Nine & Black Stocking Nine)
- N49 Girl cyclists

Compare faces on some scans from these series. You can see how women overlap across two or more subjects. They might also be aging between multiple photo shoots.

There's an ongoing question whether models or Ginter's own employees posed for these sets. While I'm inclined to think they used real employees, it's more significant that they presented women to the public in a multifaceted way that aligned with their own move to a female labor force. This meant showing cigarette rolling itself as something women could do, alongside leisure pursuits like baseball and cycling.

Within a couple of years, I believe the efficiency of Duke's machines made it clear humans didn't have a long-term role as cigarette makers. That could be why 1888 Duke Presidential Baseball Club (N154) pasted candidate faces onto the bodies of Ginter's lady ballplayers. By that point, Ginter no longer needed to make their women "visible," and might even have merged with Duke prior to the 1890 formation of American Tobacco, giving Duke card makers access to Ginter's photos. The lady baseball images themselves circulated outside Duke and Ginter, appearing on cigar cards (N694), silks, trade cards (H804-81), and probably others.

[ALBB]

very interesting

The sizes seem rather large ....sizes of the cards !!

[doug.goodman]

Here is the only m114 that I know of to include a woman

[doug.goodman]

Police Gazette cover from 1899

[molenick]

Here is an 1870s tintype of a Vassar player. More info (and a better photo) can be found on pp. 18-19 of Baseball: An Illustrated History by Ward and Burns (the book is the companion to the Burns documentary).

[Pack The Ripper]

Wonderful images! Thanks for uploading them.

BTW, I'm no relation to Jack the Ripper.

[Spike]

That is one heck of a hat!

Originally Posted by molenick

Here is an 1870s tintype of a Vassar player. More info (and a better photo) can be found on pp. 18-19 of Baseball: An Illustrated History by Ward and Burns (the book is the companion to the Burns documentary).

[1880nonsports]

on the NS sister site I believe we uncovered evidence by way of newspaper clippings that the Ginter women were paid actresses. I too believed they were most likely the employees/cigarette rolling girls - especially given the apparent porcine figures on them dames. The Duke presidential club examples superimposed the candidates head's on what was likely a retread from the same photographer - when I collected this tangent I was never able to match between the Duke and Ginter examples.
Tobacco companies spent a LOT of money on these promotions - maybe 2 cents of every nickle - they were not opposed to repurposing and re-issuing things. I DO believe that a contract for the black stocking nine was found.

[molenick]

Originally Posted by Spike

That is one heck of a hat!

I looked at it with a loupe and I can clearly read ABBC. Those letters are either preceded by a vertical line, the number one, or an I.