From the late 1880s to the 1950s, work in the fish canneries was a prized job for hundreds of women on Mount Desert Island. The work offered steady employment, a reasonable wage, decent working conditions, and the daily company of friends and family working alongside each other. The canneries were not just workplaces; they were small communities where many women felt useful and rewarded for their hard work.
The waters of Bass Harbor and Southwest Harbor provided fisherman their catch of sardines and herring that were hauled to the big cannery buildings. Women workers cleaned and packed the fish into tins at a speed that challenged the human eye to keep focus of the packer's hands. It was an art form to place the fish in the tins, according to their size, at the speed they were expected to maintain to achieve high production. The women packers usually packed in pairs, standing across a table of fish from each other. When you walked into a room of sardine packers in production, it was like walking into a dance hall where everyone worked by their own rhythm.
Women packers cut the fish with very sharp scissors. The combination of sharp scissors and a rapid packing speed resulted in a lot of finger cuts. The women would tape their fingers daily in attempt of curb the injuries.
The factory foreman would blow a whistle that was heard all over town when the fish were coming in on the boat. Women would start grabbing for their scissors and apron, and get ready for the bus to pick them up. The packing of fish could go into the wee hours of the morning. When the fish came in, packers had to stay until the last fish was in the tin.
A foreman of Stinson's Factory in Southwest Harbor was quoted as saying the whole sardine business depended on the women. “Men created it but the women sustained it.” In the foreman's 40 years in the factory, he never recalled a woman telling him she was “too tired” to complete the job. The job was, without question, one of endurance.
Packers were paid for their production. An experienced packer could average 42 cases a day and was paid 28 cents a case back when there were as many as 47 canneries along the coast of Maine. Hilda Merchant was the fastest packer at Stinson's Fish Factory in Southwest Harbor. She could cut the heads off 20,000 sardines and place them in 4,000 cans every day with extraordinary skill. The cannery industry was a driving force to coastal Maine's early economy.
The decline of the fish cannery industry was plagued by both the reduction of the women's work force and a weakened fish catch. It was difficult to fill the vacant packer positions when more attractive jobs were becoming available to women.