The Electric Secretary
By Stefene Russell
Photograph by Oscar C. Kuehn from the Wagner Electric Collection, Missouri Histrical Society Photographs and Prints
A secretary hands a phony telegram to a phony plant manager in this staged photo, and it seems all wrong. She looks pregnant but wears just a jet pinkie ring. His stare is so distant, one worries that he is blind. The office accessories, though, are sublime. “Wagner Electric,” written in windswept cursive on the company calendar, almost looks like the word “wonderful.” The map under glass, the draftsman’s tools, the silver decanter, the convincingly messy stack of papers on the roll-top desk—what a foil for the bleakness of the modern office environment. We get scrubby Berber carpet, walls painted the color of Band-Aids, windows that don’t open ... But never mind the décor. Wagner’s former headquarters—on Plymouth Avenue in Wellston—became a Superfund site. We know not what toxic gases floated through the air while the assembly line chugged along producing incandescent light bulbs, but we’ll keep our dropped ceilings—and OSHA.
