In a 1912 issue of Life and Labor, a monthly publication of the Women's Trade Union League, a narrative entitled "The Day's Work in a Cannery" appeared. Written by an author identified only as "a Factory Girl," the account described in vivid detail the demanding and often unsafe working conditions in a tomato-canning factory during the same era when the women pictured here were working at the Ghirardelli factory. While some critics of labor organizations' propaganda have suggested that accounts like "The Day's Work in a Cannery" are not reliable portraits of factory conditions, contrasting the anonymous first-person description with this photograph can, nonetheless, highlight ways in which the Ghirardelli's manufacturing and distribution site was a far more comfortable and safe place for women to work than some other factories operating in the early twentieth century.

At the tomato-canning factory, according to the Life and Labor account, workers were required to lug large boxes of the vegetables, weighing between 35 and 40 pounds, from station to station in the processing room. With some of that heavy lifting being done by pregnant women and small children, the anonymous diarist reported, "strained expressions" were always apparent on workers' faces (205). Besides the physical challenges associated with packing, women and children involved in the peeling often cut their fingers repeatedly or got burned from the scalding machine. Furthermore, the "Factory Girl" reports, both the work area and the dressing rooms the packers used were "untidy and very dirty," cramped, and "malodorous" (206). With many of the women standing "in slop and slush all day, their feet soaking wet," the long hours (as many as fourteen per day) were even harder to bear.

In 1916, around the time of the "Day's Work" article, Domingo Ghirardelli, Jr. was developing a new product for his family's business, a chocolate powder that was canned in a section of the factory pictured here. Called "broma," the ground chocolate was heavily advertised, with emphasis placed on its special appeal for children. For example, one turn-of-the-century ad described the product "As Sweet as the music of Children's Laughter/As Pure as the heart of a little Child," and pictured four girls and boys enjoying the chocolate in china cups ("Advertisement from before 1920," Lawrence). As the company's own website has noted, in fact, "Ghirardelli was one of the first American manufacturers to fully understand and use the power of advertising and promotion," including appealing images of the Ghirardelli logo and of consumers enjoying the famous chocolate (Celebrating 150 Years, online at Ghirardelli chocolate website).

Even assuming that this photograph of Ghirardelli factory employees at work could have been posed, contrasts between this canning scene and the factory setting described by the Life and Labor report suggest that the family's expectations for employee labor were, like its sophisticated use of advertising, well ahead of its time.