When I was a kid, in the 1940s, those were dinner pails. The noon meal was dinner, the evening, supper. I don't remember seeing those big rounded-square pails around the Pittsburgh area. The ones I recall (and I have one that my dad used) look sorta like a covered wagon: a boxy bottom and a rounded cover where a Thermos bottle was clamped. Miners had a different type of pail. It was big and round and they carried water in the bottom.

My dad and my grandpa both worked at Great Lakes. Many other friends and family too. It put food on the table!

Why am I not surprised that my comment that this carbon spewing in 1906 should have kicked off "global warming" over a century ago, but didn't, did not get posted. I guess it's an inconvenient truth that this didn't cause global warming then, and it doesn't today.

[Perhaps you're not the only one who's not surprised. - Dave]

That had occurred to me, honest, but their apparent uniformity got me thinking some kind of company-supplied appurtenances, like tool boxes. Whatever they are, they sure are purty.

And, there are at least four other men in the close proximity with Their Lunch Buckets. Got It! tterrace and jimmylee42 are way too smart for this dribble.

What I want to hear from are those more versed in Great Lakes History than I and tell us what this huge Ship Building enterprise, and so many other "Enterprises" did to the ecology of the Great Lakes as a whole.

After all, these Great Lakes, of which I live 15 miles from, contain 20% of all of the Fresh Water on this Planet!

Between Timber, Ore, Steel, Ship Building, and Over Fishing, and then Atlantic contamination, we have done our very best to destroy the Great Lakes.

I could be wrong. I'm not sure. This is just a guess. They seem to me to be, should I be so bold to say. I really want to be right on this. If I had to wager on it. If you pin me down on this question. Lunch buckets!? Please tell me I'm not wrong. Have always been a risk taker. Just can't help it.

They are old style lunch pails.

http://www.lunchboxes.com/history.html

Look like lunchpails to me.

So, the white or extremely shiny things we see lined up along the walls or on window sills or being carried by the men; what the heck?

As a young salesman I was taught the term "smokestacking," which meant that one could find possible new clients in an area by checking the skies for billowing plumes of black smoke and then following it to the source. This photo speaks to that mightily.