WORKING AT RADIO FLYER
When Antonio Pasin started his business, the company consisted of little more than himself, an empty garage, and his first wooden wagon full of carpentry tools. By the close of the 1930s, Radio Steel was the world’s largest and most productive manufacturer of coaster wagons, employing more than 140 fulltime workers in a factory that Antonio described as “roomy enough to fit 125 cars!”
Not only was the factory large, but it also housed some of the best working conditions, and pay, for manufacturing labor at the time. Just as he had not raised prices for consumers during the economic downturn, Antonio vowed to maintain high salaries for his employees, with an astounding zero pay cuts during the Depression. In a period when national unemployment was as high as 25 percent, and in certain neighborhoods in Chicago up to 40 percent, this was almost unheard-of.
Employees walking into the Radio Steel & Maufacturing Company factory from the outside grounds.
Of the 140 workers at Radio Flyer, a large portion were fellow Italian immigrants and former neighbors. Remembering his difficult first days in America, Antonio tried to ease the way for his employees by bringing in an English teacher to provide language lessons, offering interest-free loans, and supplying the Radio Flyer Employee Insurance Plan, which included best-in-class protection for all of Radio Flyer’s workers. The company even had its own bowling league and provided a subsidized cafeteria with an Italian cook. Antonio considered the company’s consistency and reliability with its workers to be two of its greatest accomplishments.
These practices were a part of what Antonio called “a very simple system” whereby having a singular focus on one product allowed the company to pass on the savings to its consumers and continue to pay its workers a healthy wage. This process demonstrated to its competitors that “these two paradoxical terms are perfectly compatible.” In one particularly bad month early in the Depression, Antonio simultaneously lowered the products’ prices and raised salaries. “The psychological results,” he later wrote, “were a prodigious increase in production.” If Radio Steel had not already made its loyalty to its customers and employees absolutely clear, moves like this certainly did.
The programs for Radio Steel’s twelfth and fourteenth annual company-wide summer picnics. As one of the many customs of working at Radio Steel, employees often socialized and raised their families together—several children of Radio Steel employees even chose to work alongside their parents once they had grown.
Two secretaries pose for a picture at their desks.
Employees of Radio Steel & Manufacturing Company seated outside the company’s headquarters in 1934. You can find Antonio in the third row back, center, in a dark suit and tie with his hands clasped in front.
OTHER POPULAR TOYS of the 1930s
Three popular games and pastimes in the 1930s were puzzles, Scrabble, and jacks.
Lovell’s Weekly Jig-Saw Puzzle/iStock.com/powerofforever/via iStock by Getty Images; Scrabble Boardgame/iStock.com/lenscap67/via iStock by Getty Images; a collection of jacks within the permanent collection of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis/The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis/via Wikipedia Commons
During the Depression, people experienced the unusual situation of having ample time and little to no money to spend. Adults listened to the radio, read the daily newspapers, and played a lot more games, like solitaire. Unusual hobbies and competitions—such as pie-eating contests, stamp collecting, tree sitting, mini golf, and marathon dancing—became the norm as hobby clubs of every variety and local YMCAs became the center of communities looking to pass the time. Jigsaw puzzles reached an all-time high in popularity, and board games like Sorry! and Scrabble came onto the scene. Monopoly (which major toy manufacturer Parker Brothers predicted would flop because it was “too dull, too complex, and took way too long to play”) became an overnight sensation in 1935, and is now the most popular board game in history.
Children mostly played with their older siblings’ hand-me-downs, and any new toys that came out were simple and required imagination. The yo-yo, jacks, pick-up sticks, and Slinky all became popular. (Fun fact: The Slinky was invented by accident when its creator, Richard James, a mechanical engineer, knocked over a long spring he had made and watched it “walk” down from its place instead of falling.) Kids played with dolls like the Rockford Sock Monkey or passed back and forth beach balls made from a newly popular material called “plastic.”
A CENTURY OF SMILES
RADIO FLYER STORIES
It was 1936 in the Bronx. I was four years old, and the doctors had diagnosed me with rheumatic fever. The treatment was for me to lie in bed until my condition improved. My only contact with the world outside my bedroom was each afternoon when my father came home from work. He lined the bed of my Radio Flyer with a blanket and a pillow and took me for a forty-five-minute journey around the neighborhood. I sat quietly in the Radio Flyer while Dad dutifully pulled me around. Dad waved at neighbors, introducing me to everyone he knew and even those he did not. Every day I waited for my dad to get off work and come home to lift me into the Flyer and pull me around the streets. For four years all I knew of the outside world I discovered from my position inside my Radio Flyer. Dad is gone, as is my wagon, but my memories of both fill my heart.
—RON C. • Honolulu, HI
Courtesy of Carol Kistler
—CAROL K. • Marshall, MO
Courtesy of Martha Dixon
When my brother was four, he was told that my parents were getting him a little sister. When I was adopted, he took hold of my hand and I was indeed his. Since I was only eighteen months old, I couldn’t ride on his tricycle. So he hooked up the red wagon and rode me up and down the street, and sometimes would pull me up a small hill where together we could ride down. His continued imagination with that wagon gave me many happy and loving memories of my childhood.
—MARTHA D. • Birmingham, AL
Every kid should have a Radio Flyer.
—DANA N.