Ways Done in the Past - Factory Workers

A shoe-making factory in Geylang in 1953

This is a proxy blog for a 80-year-old neighbor who wanted to tell her 15-year-old great grand-daughter  how she once worked as a 18-year-old girl in Singapore.  However, she do not have any such photos to show about the rubber factory where she worked in the 1950s.  I do not know of someone with these photos as "memory-aid" to describe to the neighbor's great grand-daughter, a young student..

Thanks to the courtesy of the National Archives of Singapore (NAS) with acknowledgement and to use these archived photos on the blog.

In this thematic series on "how ways done in the past" of  blogs, I am heartened to be approached by young students to discover old stuff about Singapore long before they were born, like the great grandmother to tell the old stories to her great grand-daughter.

On the contrary, please watch a 5-minute video clip "Downstairs", a documentary by Helmi Ali. Listen to the "ageist" comments of two young punks about old people  here at 10:00 minutes runtime after the start of the video.

How to be angry with these impertinent kids?  How did they know that many oldies are computer-savvy and these two kids should not judge the senior citizen by their appearance..."not to judge a book by its cover"?

Like Facebook to introduce friends about, a "Face Tattoo" should be used with tattoo on the foreheads of everybody with words like "I am a computer user", "I am a PhD", etc which nobody knows who they are by looks.

I would have more "advertising space" on top of my bald head without hair as other friends...

Back to this blog topic about factories and factory workers in the past.

Rubber factory in Singapore in the 1950

Metal component factory in the 1950s

Biscuit factory in the 1950s

Ho Ho Biscuit Factory Limited  c 1951

Thye Hong Biscuit Factory  c  1951

Cloth factory in Singapore in 1953

Noodle manufacturing factory in 1960s

Yeo Hiap Seng Sauce & Canning Factory in the 1960s

Sauce mannually bottled in the factory in 1957

Bottled sauce bottles manually packed in the factory

Quality control for clean bottles in the factory in 1961

Partial machinery processing of canned food in 1961

Singapore Steam Laundry

Singapore Steam Laundry at Delta Road in 1927

Singapore Steam Laundry at Delta Road in 1930

The Singapore Steam Laundry main offfice in 1953

My elder sisters were working at Singapore Steam Laundry in the 1950s until Bukit Ho Swee fire in 1961. They later found jobs in the laundry of the local hotels.

From this photojournal blog, what have we learnt from the profile of  factory workers over the 5 decades in Singapore?

The people, the jobs, the factories, the economy of Singapore have moved from the third world to the first world country as we can see today.  What were to have happened if Singapore did not adapt to fit into global world for trade and investments,  the education and training for the suitable for the business world as needed and useful.

Thanks to the vision and pragmatism of the founding fathers of Singapore,  the cottage industries of "small medium enterprises (SMEs) with small pockets of factories located at various parts of small industrial estates converted  a swamp to the Jurong Industrial Estate by Finance Minister Goh Keng Swee, the "Father of Jurong" .  The rest is history, as people said.

According to my businessman friends to speak frankly, the businessmen are the most realistic people in the world.  They speak as accounting terms of assets and liabilities, of dollars and cents for the country's economy and job creation for the people.  The most important these international businessmen and investors are prepared to stay in Singapore a place to have safety, security, political stability,  law and order and a harmonious community... stand up to the National Pledge in every words as a mantra of every Singaporean.

"Majullah Singapura"!