Of Pails and Buckets, Boxes and Bags

During the Second Industrial Revolution in America, the population shifted from being mostly rural to slightly more than half urban. Along with rearrangement came the situation that non-farm workers could no longer return home at midday to eat their dinner. The average laborer needed to carry his dinner with him to his worksite. The dinner pail (or dinner bucket) made this possible. As time progressed, dinner supplanted supper as the evening meal. Lunch became the noon meal. Likewise, the lunch box (lunch pail, lunch bucket, or lunch bag) replaced the dinner pail as the means of conveyance for the meal. The dinner pail grew to be more than just a physical object during its existence. It was used as a metaphor for prosperity in two presidential elections and then when suitable for another three decades. At the same time, the dinner pail became the symbol of the blue-collar worker. The dinner pail was represented in poems, songs, and plays. By mid-twentieth century, the metal lunch box has all but replaced the dinner pail, and 35 years later it would cease to be made.