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May 1943. "Mary Grimm, 8, doing the housework (in the kitchen also seen here). Her mother, a 26-year-old widow, is crane operator at Pratt & Letchworth, Buffalo, New York." Photo by Marjory Collins, Office of War Information. View full size.
That was the old ad line used by the makers of Duz soap powder.
My mother had most of the standard soap powders on hand.
I recall Rinso and Ivory Snow powder and Ivory Flakes detergent.
The liquid products came later for dishes and laundry and the powder and flake soaps were quickly replaced thereafter.
Geezer
A little more than 20 years after this I can remember my mom washing dishes in Duz Detergent. You got a free drinking glass in every box, and as a small kid I thought that was just the Bees' Knees.
This and the other photo of the Grimm family show how hard it was for this young family to get by. In the photo above, the wallpaper is stained, the floor needs sweeping and the little girl has a nasty bruise on her leg. She's holding a Hall Jewel bowl (as Beachy has pointed out), probably a remnant of more affluent times.
She's holding a Jewel Tea mixing bowl. They came in sets of three. I still have one that I kept from my mom. The Jewel Tea man used to come door to door selling all kinds of stuff. This Hall mixing bowl set was first made in the 1930s and only sold by the Jewel Tea man. I see this pattern of bowls, and I always think of potato salad. Mom always used the largest of our Jewel Tea bowls for her famous potato salad.
That beautiful bowl is from the Autumn Leaf pattern by Hall China. It was sold by the Jewel Tea man.
Growing up in Philadelphia in the 1940s, we had three trash cans during the winter months. One for food scraps, one for general trash and one for coal dust. Food scraps went to pig farms and the coal dust went to the Street Department to put on icy roads.
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