SYMHC Classics: Levi Strauss

This 2018 episode covers Levi Strauss, whose life story touches on a lot of important moments in U.S. history. His business was tied to the California Gold Rush, the U.S. Civil War and American clothing culture.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. The US Patent Office granted a patent to
Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss one hundred and fifty
years ago today. That was the patent for Improvements in
Fastening Pocket Openings, which is generally recognized as the patent
for the first blue jeans. We covered Levi Strauss and

(00:23):
the development of blue jeans, along with other parts of
his life and career in our August eighth, twenty eighteen episode,
and that is today's Saturday Classic Enjoy Welcome to Stuff
You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,

(00:45):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm
Tracy V. Wilson. And today's episode was requested approximately one
hundred years ago, if you go by way of hyperbole
by our listener other not really one hundred years ago,
but it feels that way. It was a very long time,
and I have had it on my list throughout that time,
but I am only just now getting to it. For

(01:06):
a variety of reasons. We are talking today about Levi Strauss,
and his story is really historically interesting because it touches
on a lot of important moments in US history. So
he was an immigrant who ended up in a business
that was impacted by and in turn affected the US
Civil War and American clothing culture. He has a story

(01:26):
that's tied to the Gold Rush. He also had a
vision for his adopted city of San Francisco that he
worked really hard to achieve so that future generations would
benefit from it, and his life, in many ways is
the story of the United States in the nineteenth century
from the perspective of a Jewish immigrant who became a
captain of industry. Before we get into his story, I

(01:48):
will make a confession, which is that until fairly recently,
probably five years is Shigo, I thought Levi and Strauss
were two different people that had been in business together.
That's all I'm saying. So clearly I missed this in
history class because even though people wear Levi's and you'd
call it Levi Strauss, I didn't realize that was one

(02:09):
person's proper name. So I grew up in North Carolina,
not all that far away from Cone Mills, which is
who made the denim for Levi's five oh ones for
two hundred years or something, So like this is a
piece of history that is like I'm a little more
steeped in I didn't have confusion about whether Levi and
Strauss are two people. It's not my proudest moment. But

(02:33):
in my defense, even though I am a clothes person,
I don't think I owned a pair of jeans of
any flavor from about nineteen eighty five until like two
years ago. Like that's just never been my things. So's
that's my excuse paltry. Though it may be that I
just never examined Levi Strauss. If it makes you feel better,

(02:56):
I thought Hannah Barbara was one person. It was a woman.
Oh no, that'd be funny, but no. So. Levi was
born Lueb Strauss on February twenty, sixth of eighteen twenty
nine in Budenheim, Germany. His father, Hirsch Strauss, was a
salesman who sold household goods store to door. His mother's

(03:17):
name was Rebecca has Strauss, and both she and Hirsch
grew up in Franconia. It's an area in the north
of modern day Bavaria, which was predominantly Jewish. Rebecca was
Hirsch's second wife. His first wife, matel Baumann Strauss, had
died at the age of thirty five, leaving him with
five children. Then Hirsh and Rebecca had two more children together,

(03:39):
a daughter, and then Lub and Hirsh. Rebecca and their
seven children lived in a three room downstairs floor of
a two story house. So this was a time when
Bavaria's Udenadict or Jew law was in effect that had
started in the eighteen teens. In this law seemed as
though it offered Jewish citizens the opportunity to pursue a
number of jobs that had once been forbidden to them,

(04:01):
but in return, it also created really strict regulations for
their lives. Among them, marriage and immigration of new Jews
was severely limited. All Jews had to be registered, they
had to take German names, they could not own land,
and even their language was codified so all public records
had to be kept in German. They could not use
Hebrew for those someone like Hirsch Strauss, who traveled through

(04:25):
the area selling his wares, also served as messengers and
as community connectors during this time, and in this profession
Kirsch was sort of exempted from a part of the
Udon edict. Working as a peddler, which had been a
traditional job for Jewish men in the area for a
long time, was no longer considered an acceptable career, but

(04:46):
older people like Hirsh who weren't able to pick up
a new profession were allowed to keep doing it. Yeah,
it was expected that they would just eventually die off,
and so would that profession, and all of the limitations
of the Uden edict eventually inspired emigration. One of the
marriage laws that really created a problem was that only
the eldest son of any Jewish household could get married,

(05:09):
and so there were some workarounds like if another son
that was younger wanted to marry a widow, that was acceptable,
or if a couple that had no children wanted to
give up the slot, their eldest son would have had
to another family so they could have two sons Mary
they could, but basically this really limited the entire societal
culture because all of these young women could not get married,

(05:31):
all of these young men could not get married. It
was frustrating. So eventually they wanted to leave, and in
eighteen thirty seven there was a group of eighteen people
that left. Eighteen young people and two of Lub's older
siblings were part of that. They left Germany to make
homes in London and New York. In nineteen forty and
nineteen forty one. Two more of the Strass children followed suit.

(05:54):
In eighteen forty six, Hirsh died of tuberculosis. Rebecca remarried
soon after to Hersh's brother, who was a widower named Lippmann,
but Lippmann died just a few weeks after the wedding.
Loub was seventeen at that time and two of his
sisters were still living at home, and emigration at this
point was not easy. You couldn't just pick up and leave.

(06:14):
The Bavarian government had to approve anyone who wished to
leave the country, and you had to prove that neither
you nor anyone in your family had any sort of
criminal record, and that you could afford to make the trip.
On March seventeenth, eighteen forty seven, Rebecca Strauss filed an
emigration petition in which she stated that because she was
a widow, she didn't have the financial support anymore. She

(06:36):
didn't know how she would provide for her youngest son,
but she had children in the United States who could
help her get settled there. Lib was old enough to
work and contribute to the family's finances once they arrived,
and for his part, Loub wrote his own petition, stating quote,
no members of my family will stay behind. I will
share the faith that has been assigned to me with

(06:56):
them in foreign lands. I thus joined my mother in
her place Poe. On June twenty sixth, eighteen forty seven,
Rebecca and her children, so Lub and his two sisters
were approved for immigration, but they didn't leave immediately because
Rebecca needed to make sure that the family that had
gone on to New York had indeed made preparations for
the three of them to arrive and live there. They

(07:18):
finally made their way in the spring of eighteen forty eight,
although the specifics of their transatlantic passage aren't really documented
or known. Jonas and Louis Strauss, Libb's brothers, had both
become dry goods merchants in the city. They'd opened up
a shop at three ninety three and a half Grand Street,
but by the time the family arrived, they had moved
to a more lucrative location at two three and a

(07:40):
half Division Street. They lived above the shop. Jonas had
also gotten married and started his own family, and at
some point Lub followed the example that his siblings had,
and he changed his name to a more americanized version.
This was not uncommon, and in the eighteen fifty census
he is listed as Levi with a Y. He also

(08:03):
started working in the family dry goods business. While he
was there, he learned English really quickly so that he
could speak with business partners and customers, and he applied
for US citizenship, just as his brothers had done before him.
The Strauss's dry goods business was doing really well. They
moved to another new location near Union Market in eighteen
fifty one, and as their family business was growing, a

(08:24):
new opportunity was making itself a parent across the country,
as the California Gold Rush fostered new towns, new prosperity,
and a need for dry goods. The Strauss brothers did
not want to miss a chance to capitalize on this
new market, but they also needed to keep their established
New York business going, and so the youngest brother of

(08:44):
the family was sent west. Five days after he took
his oath of citizenship. On January thirty first, eighteen fifty three,
Loeb Strauss, who was now going by Levi, left New
York for San Francisco aboard the US mailship Georgia, which
was a steamer, and the family had already loaded a
shipment of merchandise aboard another ship called the Winged Racer

(09:07):
for Levi to take possession of once he reached San Francisco.
The clipper Winged Racer was sailing down around the tip
of South America and then north to California. Levi would
make the trip in less time, traveling through Panama. This was,
of course, before the Panama Canal was built, so he
took the steamer Georgia to Panama and then traveled across
that thin strip of the country to Panama City on

(09:29):
the Pacific side. They got on another steamer there called
the Isthmus and that was bound for San Francisco. He
arrived in San Francisco on March thirteenth, eighteen fifty three.
This was considered for a lot of people a safer
plan than trying to travel overland from New York to
San Francisco, because people often did not survive that journey,

(09:51):
or if they did get to California, they got there
in pretty sorry shape. This was a little bit of
an easier move, and the specifics of Levi's first days
in San Francisco are also unknown. He would have needed
to rent warehouse space for the goods that were coming
in on the winged racer, and he would have needed
to find lodgings for himself. He most likely had some
letters of introduction to family connections that had already made

(10:14):
that journey west, so it wasn't as though he just
showed up and had to figure everything out by himself.
He had some security net in place that merchandise that
had been shipped showed up two weeks after leap I
did on March thirtieth. Unlike other merchants who had some
bid on merchandise that was shipped on Speck, once it
got to the port at San Francisco, Levi knew what
was coming. He just had to inspect it, accept it,

(10:37):
and then move it into the warehouse. As he got
to know the market in California, he could ensure that
future shipments contained items that would be the most likely
to move and to make the most money. And for clarity,
the Strausses were not opening a retail shop in San Francisco,
even though they had sort of a similar one in
New York. They were basically setting up a wholesale business

(10:57):
that would sell stock to other merchants for their shops.
So Levi had to invest time in developing really good
relationships with other businessmen in the area, and he was
twenty four at this point. He wasn't supporting a wife
or family, so aside from attending synagogue and participating in
social events primarily within San Francisco's Jewish community, all of

(11:18):
his efforts could be focused on establishing the family's new
West Coast firm. And he wasn't only working with retailers
in San Francisco either. He also traveled inland to Sacramento,
and he paid visits to smaller mining towns to make
deals with the shopkeepers there. And this was an ongoing
practice for the business that he pretty much carried out forever.

(11:38):
So when news broke of new or strikes or a
new town popping up, Strauss was smart enough to go
get into those towns that sprouted up in those places
really quickly and forge those new business partnerships. Coming up,
we'll talk more about how Levi Strauss set up the
Strauss family business in San Francisco, but first we will
take a little break for a word from a sponsor.

(12:08):
So Levi quickly established a list of regular clientele and
even as he had received shipment of that first load
of freight that his brothers had sent. There were already
two other shipments on the way. He was doing business
ostensibly for the company that his brother founded, which was
Jay straussan brother, but he was invoicing clients sort of
as a separate business as just Levi Strauss. In July

(12:29):
eighteen fifty five, Levi sent a shipment of gold back
to his brothers. This was valued at a little over
ten thousand dollars at the time, which is estimated to
be close to a quarter of a million dollars in
modern currency. Of course, it's really difficult to make those estimates. Clearly,
the California office was doing really well. In spite of

(12:50):
the fact that there was something a financial panic going
on in San Francisco that year, it didn't seem to
impact Strauss. By the end of eighteen fifty five, he'd
sent more than eighty two thousand dollars home in gold. Yeah,
one of the things that really made his business. It'll
come up over and over that even when they are difficulties,
they still managed to pull through and even do pretty well.
Like people will always need dry goods, they always need clothes,

(13:14):
and linens and household basics, so it was a really
smart business to be in the first place. In eighteen
fifty six saw continued expansion of the Strauss enterprise in California.
Levi's sister, Fogela, who had changed her name to Fanny
when she moved to the United States, moved to San
Francisco with her husband, David Stearns, and their children to

(13:34):
assist with the growing responsibilities of the business, and his
brother Lewis also joined them. It is possible, though unconfirmed,
that his mother, Rebecca, made the journey as well, and
for the first time since moving to the US, Levi
actually had a home with an address that was separate
from his business, not living above it or within it,
indicating that there was this ongoing trend of prosperity. The

(13:57):
firm also changed names that year from Jay Strauss and
Brother to Jay Strauss, Brother and Company, maybe to acknowledge
Levi's contribution, but on all records in California it was
listed as Levi Strauss. Levi sent more than double the
amount to New York in eighteen fifty six that he
had in eighteen fifty five. That amounted to approximately two

(14:19):
hundred thousand dollars. Eventually, in the late eighteen sixties, Levi
changed the name of the California branch to Levi Strauss
and Company, recognizing his family member's contributions. Eighteen fifty six
was also the year that Levi Strauss became involved, along
with his brother in law, in the Committee of Vigilance,
which was a vigilante group made up largely of merchants

(14:41):
that formed a combat the city's growing political corruption and
related violence. While business and politics had largely stayed separate
up to that point, concerns over how businesses could be
impacted by the lawlessness of men in power led to
the Committee of Vigilance nominating and eventually electing many of
the city the business leaders into political office. So they

(15:02):
picked people that they knew from other merchants and put
them in office because they thought that was safer. And
while Strauss did not seem to have any political ambitions
of his own, he did back the political efforts of
the Committee. Those committees, there were several of them and
several places at this time period, and in some places

(15:23):
their activities were kind of controversial because there was like
an extra judicial violence capacity in this combat of corruption.
So it's like there's a whole bigger story there. But
his involvement was really about electing businessmen to city positions,
and there had actually been a similar committee in San

(15:43):
Francisco several years prior to this that was much more
of like a vigilanti law force that thought that they
would fill the gap between the crime that was going
on and the police that were obviously to their minds,
not doing anything about it. So that existed in San
Francisco as well, although he was not part of that
at the time. In eighteen fifty seven, the Strauss family

(16:03):
experienced a financial loss. In September, the SS Central America,
which had picked up passengers and freight in Panama, including
a large shipment of gold, went down in a hurricane
off the US coast in the Atlantic. More than four
hundred people died and an estimated one point five million
dollars of gold was lost, including seventy six thousand dollars

(16:27):
that was en route to J. Strauss brother and Company
from Levi Strauss and Company. Incidentally, the wreckage of the
Central America was found and much of the treasure recovered
in nineteen eighty eight, although there was a significant legal
battle over who should get that gold. The sinking of
the Central America set off a financial panic. There was
a lot of gold that New York banks had been

(16:49):
expecting on that ship, so when it didn't show up
that was it was a significant economic disruption. And yet,
as seems to be the pattern of his life, Levi
Strauss weathered this storm. Part of this was because his
brothers were the ones shipping him goods, so that meant
he didn't have to reassure a supplier of his good
credit and be like, no, no, I know, I lost

(17:09):
some money, but I will make it up to you.
They were like, yeah, we'll just keep it going. So
the Strauss family continued business as usual, and because other
entrepreneurs didn't have the credit or the leverage to do
the same thing, Levi's business flourished as others shut down.
By the end of the year, he was shipping gold
to New York once again, and he had expanded to
have offices in the city that were actually separate from

(17:31):
his warehouse. He was also taking shipments of raw materials
from suppliers outside the family, which he then leveraged in
deals that got him discounts on the goods that were
made from those raw materials. As the country found itself
in the grip of the Civil War, San Francisco's citizens
realized they could eventually be impacted by it. California had

(17:52):
entered the Union as a free state, as outlined in
the Compromise of eighteen fifty, but while most of the
city was loyal to the Union, there were some concerns
about some government officials wanting to ally with the Confederacy.
After a pro Union rally in the city on May eleventh,
eighteen sixty one, at the junction of Montgomery Market and
Post Streets, a resolution was put forth that formed a

(18:16):
Union Committee of thirty four. This is a committee of
respected men who would uphold the ideals of the Union,
fill vacant government posts, and keep an eye out for treason.
Levi Strauss is one of the men named as a
member of this group, and one of only three Jewish
men included. Yeah, they were very worried that there were
people that were infiltrating California who were pro slavery, and

(18:39):
that it was going to completely cause an upheaval of
everything going on in the state, and particularly in a
large city like San Francisco. So they really wanted to
try to keep an eye out and prevent such a problem,
and when the troops that were stationed at the Presidio
were sent east to fight, it really left the people
of San Francisco a little bit uneasy and they were

(19:00):
fearful without protection. An a volunteer group known as the
Home Guard was founded that consisted of three thousand men,
and it sort of served as a makeshift military force.
The Home Guard and the Union Committee of thirty four
actually disbanded though, when Leland Stanford was elected California governor.
Stanford was a pro Union Republican who was very well respected, successful,

(19:22):
and powerful, so the concerns of some sort of pro
Confederacy uprising that had led to the formation of those
two groups were pretty diminished under his leadership. Strauss and
his California business continued to do well through all of this,
and the prosperity of California's merchants helped keep the country
afloat through the Civil War. Strauss had recognized the value

(19:42):
of real estate fairly early on and had invested in
a number of properties throughout the city, which he often
sold as a prophet after holding them for some time.
Levi Strauss and Company also moved into a new space
that he purchased in eighteen sixty seven, so was a
four story building on Battery Stree that clearly showed the
company's success. The company was known for its excellent and

(20:04):
speedy service and the ability of its employees to satisfy
client needs with even the largest orders. Yeah, there was
a write up where they actually used the word empowered
to describe the salespeople and clerks at Levi Strauss as
being able, like they were empowered to meet the needs
and agree to deals with clients, which is sort of

(20:26):
a weird word to be using in the eighteen sixties,
but there it was. Unfortunately, the late eighteen sixties also
came with family loss, as Levi's half sister Mary died
in eighteen sixty six and his mother, Rebecca passed three
years later. After Rebecca's death, Levi traveled back to New
York and he stayed there for a month, presumably to
help settle accounts and get her affairs in order. There

(20:48):
was also an embezzlement scandal at Levi, Strauss and Company
in October of eighteen sixty six, when news broke that
a bookkeeper had taken five hundred thousand dollars and left
the country. While the company, not wanting to scare away
business partners, said that there was no money missing, it
also made a statement in an advertisement that the man

(21:08):
in question, G. S. Goodman, was no longer with the
company it was not authorized to conduct business on behalf
of Levi Strauss and Company. This mix of messages seemed
to blow over. While mister Goodman never saw any retribution
of the fact that he had taken money from his employer,
quite a lot of money from his employer, neither the
company nor Levi Strauss personally seemed to suffer any negative

(21:31):
fallout from it. Either. Yeah, that's one of those stories
where it's like they completely claimed that it had not happened,
so there is no record of it happening. But then
the fact that they're also like, but also if you
talk to that guy, he doesn't work for us anymore.
You know, it does seem like it's a little bit
of a weird combination of things to put out in
the press. The company continued explosive growth right into the

(21:55):
eighteen seventies, as Levi, who obviously had an impressive business instinct,
realized that he needed to expand into international markets. At
that point, his business had expanded to supply merchants all
along the Western Seaboard and into Oregon and Montana, but
he was also expanding farther into the American Southwest, and
then he started to reach out to potential clients in Canada, Mexico,

(22:18):
and Hawaii. Coming up, we're going to dive into the
thing that the Levi Strauss name is most closely associated
with today, which is blue jeans. First, we're going to
have a quick sponsor break. Jacob Davis, who presumably started

(22:42):
out his yakub and americanized his name when he got here,
was also a Jewish immigrant, and he had moved to
the United States from Russia as a young man. He,
like Levi, also worked in dry goods as a cutter
and a tailor, although he had also dabbled in the
brewery business and some other enterprises. He was also an inventor.
He had developed a screw based clothing fastener, an ironing

(23:04):
board that could also stretch clothes, and a folding press,
and those last two items were granted patents, but that
fastener was not. Jacob had also expanded his tailoring work
to make tents and wagon covers. To capitalize on a
need for those kinds of goods and mining towns in Nevada,
where he lived, he started making very sturdy, long lasting

(23:25):
trousers for laborers out of duck and denim. Duck is
like a very densely woven cloth, and he eventually, on
the sixth suggestion of a relative, started buying his duck
yardage from Levi Straussing Company. Yeah, duck is usually compared
to like a very densely woven canvas. Almost. It's one

(23:48):
of those things that people still make work clothes out of.
Sometimes I don't love it. It's a little stiff for
my taste. It's very sturdy. It will last you a
long time. And to please one of his hailering customers
who came in to order work pants for her husband,
who apparently wore through them at a pretty good clip,
Davis used rivets to reinforce the pockets. The story goes

(24:09):
that the wife came in because she said, my husband
has worn out all his pants and cannot leave the house.
I have to come at place's order. So she had
to go back with a piece of string and mark
like his waistline and other measurements and then bring it
back to the shop and she was delighted. It appeared
her husband was delighted. Jacob later saw her husband around
town wearing these pants, so it seemed like everything was

(24:30):
going great. And he included that detail those riveted pockets
on a number of other pairs of pants because people
started to see these pants in town and asked where
they came from and could they also get the same ones,
And so he started making these pants with duck canvas
and riveted pockets for more and more people. As the
riveted pants pocket became popular with his customers, Davis decided

(24:52):
he should patent them, but that was a really expensive process,
and the story goes that his wife didn't want him
to spend money that they didn't have trying to do it.
So along with a payment on an invoice that he
sent to Levi strauss In company, he also sent two
pairs of pants with the proposition that the company apply
for the patent in his name and in return, he

(25:13):
would give the company half the rights to sell the pants.
This is like the most trusting move I can possibly
imagine someone doing. I know, here's this thing I invented.
I would like you to help me patent. By the way,
it's not patented yet, but here it is. Yeah, especially
having been working on this day in history class and
recently recording episodes on people like Filo Farnsworth and Nikola Tesla,

(25:39):
Like there are so many stories about a big business
that's like, I'm gonna take this patent from you for
no money and exploit it. Yay. In a lecture that
I was watching online of a Levi Strauss biographer whose
book I used for a lot of this, she was saying, like,
to her, this really indicates how trustworthy Levi Straus was

(26:00):
perceived to be by people that just knew his name,
Like he just had this reputation for being a really
honest and good man, and so this person completely trusted
him with his invention. And there it went, and Strauss
was no fool. He went for the idea really quickly.
He wrote up an agreement that gave the company Levi
Strauss and Company exclusive rights to sell the pants on

(26:22):
the West coast, and that quote rights outside of the
Pacific Coast and territory shall be equally divided between ourselves
and Davis. Davis agreed to these terms and made it
very clear that this was not just about the rivets,
it was also about the cut and construction. He offered
to oversee the manufacture of the pants, either in New

(26:43):
York or in San Francisco, whichever Strauss preferred, and the
first patent application filed on behalf of Davis, was rejected
on the basis that the military had been using rivets
in the construction of shoes already, and so that just
using them on pockets was really not an innovation. Strauss
did not accept this. He hired lawyers who specialized in

(27:04):
patent law to appeal the case, but it was once
again rejected. In early eighteen seventy three, Strauss and Davis
were preparing another go at a patent for these riveted pants.
Davis and his family moved to San Francisco in May.
A revised version of their application was submitted, this time

(27:24):
with more detail about the distinction between the riveting that
they were using on clothes and the way that rivets
had been used on shoes. Just a few weeks later,
on May twenty at of eighteen seventy three, the patent
was issued. Strauss paid Davis for the value of his
home and store in Reno Nevada, and the Davises made
their move to San Francisco permanent so that Jacob could

(27:45):
oversee production of this new line of riveted trousers. Strauss
later sold this back to Davis for a dollar and
he flipped it. Yeah, it was a couple of years
later that Davis bought back his house and shop in Reno,
and I think it was only like three months after
that that he sold it. And at the time, they
marketed these new pants as overalls, and that word did

(28:08):
not have the connotation of bib overalls that it would
have today. They were sometimes called waste overalls, like basically
part of that was because you could wear them over
other pants, but people wore them without pants underneath it
as well. The first batches went out in June of
eighteen seventy three, so that was just a month after
the patent was approved. At nineteen fifty per dozen pairs,

(28:30):
so nineteen dollars and fifty cents for a dozen of them.
This was a substantial increase over previous market prices for
similar garments, more than a dollar more than individual purchasers
were used to seeing. So for a merchant that was
the middleman to have to pay that much per pant
was significant. They really had to explain, No, these are

(28:53):
going to last you so long. They are way stronger
and better than other pants. Strauss opened up a new
factory location so they could start more serious production. The
following month, they placed an ad for first class female
sewing machine operators. These operators had to bring their own
sewing machines that were suitable for heavy work. Yeah he

(29:13):
Even in the advertisement they laid out which sewing machine
models would be acceptable and if you didn't have one
of those, don't apply for the job. Soon Levi Straussing
Company also started selling riveted duck coats for hunting, and
by the end of eighteen seventy three they had sold
an estimated twenty thousand garments. The pants that they were
making at the beginning bore pretty much all the characteristics

(29:35):
we see on Levi's today, although they have shifted in
style a little bit, so they had copper rivets, they
had that mustard orange thread for stitching, and the curvy,
shallow V stitching on the back pocket. The year after
Levi and Jacob's riveted overalls hit the market, Levi was
named by The New York Times as one of San
Francisco's millionaires. He had also set up the company, which

(29:57):
was basically functioning on its own, a separate entity from
Jay Strauss's brother and company. It's a co partnership with
his brothers so that they would have power of attorney
and be able to make decisions about the business in
the event that he was not able to. Yeah, he
kind of realized this has grown massive, and I can't
be the only one who makes decisions if something goes awry.

(30:20):
And that same year, Levi Strauss also sued a competitor
who started using rivets in the construction of their pants.
That other manufacturer, ab lfeldt In Company, pulled all the
product that they had made from shelves once that suit
was filed, but Strauss continued the legal action anyway in
order to deter others from infringing on the patent. Just

(30:41):
a couple of years later, Levi Strauss and his brothers
set up an East Coast factory under Jacob Davis's supervision
to make riveted goods, But in late eighteen seventy six,
another manufacturer, HW King and Company started making riveted goods
as well. Levi Strauss saw his company's numbers drop, even
as they brought an infringement suit against this other company.

(31:03):
After a four year legal battle, the case was decided
in favor of Levi Strauss and Company. Yeah, that's a
long time for that to drag out, but they were like, nope,
we're going to do it eventually. They did start as
their patents did not last forever, and they started realizing
that they had to do branding so that their genes
were completely recognizable from others and people could ask for

(31:25):
them by look. That's how they developed their logo. They
kind of knew they couldn't stave off other people using
rivets forever, so they've got very savvy about how they
presented their clothes. There were also two more deaths in
the Strauss family in eighteen seventy four. Levi's brother in
law and senior partner, David Stern, died in January and
in August. One of David's sons, who was just eighteen,

(31:47):
died for reasons that have been lost to the historical record.
And even as there were losses, the family also continued
to grow through marriage and children, and it reached a
point where fourteen people were all living in Strauss's including himself,
so they moved to a larger home on Leavenworth Street.
In the eighteen seventies, Chinese immigrants in California were being

(32:08):
viewed with increasing hostility as they competed for jobs with
white laborers in the same market with fewer and fewer opportunities.
In eighteen seventy six, Strauss was named in an expose
that appeared in the Daily Morning Call. The claim was
that Strauss was employing five hundred Chinese workers. A rebuttal

(32:30):
appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle the following day, saying
that the company employed exactly one Chinese person and that
that person was in a position that white laborers had
quote again and again tried and failed to do. That
position was cutting the dense fabrics that were used to
make these overalls. Generally, Levi Strauss and Company, like a

(32:51):
lot of manufacturers at the time, really stressed in their
advertising that their goods were made by white labor. Yeah,
this was a whole problematic thing. To talk about it
a little more in a moment, But we have talked
before also on the show about the racism that became rampant,
particularly on the West coast of the United States during

(33:11):
this time towards Asian immigrants, and he continued to do
business with Chinese merchants. He did not seem to have
an aversion to them at all or be racist towards
them in terms of business partnerships. But he kind of
knew that if he was like, yes, I hired Chinese labors,
that it would tank the company because people would not
trust him anymore. So he was complicit in this whole system.

(33:34):
But that doesn't seem to reflect like a personal outward racism, right,
I know. And in eighteen eighty he worked on the
committee that arranged the San Francisco visit of President Rutherford B. Hayes.
This was kind of funny because it was reported that
mister and missus Levi Strauss attended a dinner in the
President's honor, But Levi never got married, so it is

(33:57):
unclear if he had taken a female relative to this
event or an acquaintance, or if the paper simply got
the facts wrong. In January of eighteen eighty one, the
San Francisco Bulletin published the details of Levi Strauss's funeral.
There's one problem, he was very much alive at this point. Initially,
this sounds like a really funny mix up, but it

(34:18):
was actually a really sad moment. Levi's brother Lewis had
been the one who had died, and the paper had
to publish a correction the next day. Three years later,
the Strauss's sister, Fanny, who had been very close to Levi,
also died, and the oldest sibling and founder of the
family business, Jonah Strauss, died in eighteen eighty five. Like Levi,

(34:40):
his siblings had also been really involved in philanthropic work. Yeah,
we're going to talk about his philanthropy in just a moment,
but all of their obituaries talk about all of the
places that they donated both money and time, all of
the causes they supported. It definitely was a family affair
in terms of like wanting a better community and a
better future for the children that would come after. Another

(35:03):
devastating loss came in eighteen ninety three when Levi's nephew Nathan,
who had been running the New York offices for the firm,
shot himself in his office bathroom, and while it eventually
came out that he had lost a good bit of money,
it was never discovered exactly how that had happened. There
were certainly lots of rumors about how it might have happened,
but there is no clear evidence as to actually what
had led him to that moment. In nineteen hundred, Levi

(35:27):
Strauss and Company printed its first catalog. The business seemed
to have no limit to its potential. At this point.
He weathered a labor strike that took place throughout the
city that year. In nineteen oh two, he also joined
with other community leaders to speak out against making the
provisions of the eighteen ninety two Geary Act permanent. The
Geary Act had extended the provisions of the eighteen eighty

(35:50):
two Chinese Exclusion Act, and we've talked about the Chinese
Exclusion Act on the show. Before the telegram that was
sent by Strauss and his colleagues to Washington, d C.
Stated that barring legitimate Chinese merchants was an injustice. This
plea did not have the desired effect, though the extension

(36:10):
of the Geary Act came through. Yeah, and there's discussion
of just how much this was like an activist moment
versus your stupid to turn away business that's going to
help our country and particularly our community grow. But he
did speak out against it, even though that did not
play out the way they had hoped. In September of

(36:30):
nineteen oh two, Levi Strauss was diagnosed after feeling a
little unwell for a bit with a slight congestion of
the liver, and it was believed that he was going
to recover, and he did start to feel better, and
two days after a doctor had visited and given him
this diagnosis, Levi Strauss died after eating dinner with his
family and then returning to bed. He was interred at

(36:51):
the family mausoleum at the Home of Peace Cemetery after
a funeral at his home, and his four surviving nephews
inherited the business and his fortune. His nieces each received
a significant sum to be given directly to them and
not to their spouses or other male relatives for management.
That was something that one of his brothers had done
as well. And he also left money to all of

(37:13):
the various charities that he had worked with over the years.
So I will tell you, and if you have listened
to this podcast for any period of time, you can
understand why that as I researched this episode, I kept
waiting for the other shoe to drop because we have
so many instances of really interesting seeming people that then
in the course of actually digging into their biography we

(37:34):
find out some horrifying thing that they did or were
a part of. Here's the secret evil. I didn't think
I was signing up for with this, right right, Oh,
I thought this was like, no, they're horrible. And while
Levi Strauss was certainly a shrewd businessman who did look
after the interests of his company, he also seems to
have been a genuinely nice and pretty good human being,

(37:58):
surely not faultless. But I kept expecting some horrific thing
to appear and it didn't. Yeah, We've got plenty of
things that, like we said, were problematic, like being like, oh, no,
we only employ white people. That, yeah, that's not great.
But also it was not a case of like, let

(38:18):
me literally enslave people in the basement, which seems like
that's more often than not the story we accidentally wind
up telling. And his prosperity, Levi Strauss upheld the Jewish
ideology of benevolence. He donated money to worthy causes in
the San Francisco community, both those run by various iterations

(38:40):
of Jewish benevolent associations and non Jewish charities as well. Yeah,
he actually started donating money almost as soon as he
started making money after he moved to California. It seemed
to have been just something that was deeply important to him.
And in the eighteen sixties he donated to the US
Sanitary Commission to help clean up Union camps to minim
the rampant disease there. He advocated for and participated in

(39:04):
a shutdown of businesses in San Francisco on election day
on November eighth, eighteen sixty four. That was the election
that Lincoln won for what would have been his second term.
He was also one of the founders of the Concordia Society,
which began in January of eighteen sixty five, which was
a place where Jewish leaders and professionals could gather for
social and educational events. Strauss was the club's first vice president. Yeah,

(39:28):
that was another one of those institutions that was really
forward facing in terms of looking to the future. They
also wanted to make sure that young Jewish professionals could
come in and learn from mentors and get a support
system to help them succeed, and he became increasingly involved
in community government and politics over the years. He seemed
to think it was his responsibility as a successful person.

(39:50):
He was a vocal supporter of the Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty
of eighteen seventy five, which removed tariffs on goods traded
between the Kingdom of Hawaii and the US, and he
also advocated for building regulations that would reduce the risk
of fire spreading in the increasingly tightly packed city. He
had had some fires himself that impacted his properties, and
so of course those efforts had benefit to other people,

(40:14):
but they also benefited his personal business. He also drummed
up donations for the Garfield Monument Fund Association, donated to orphanages,
and helped set up the Labor Exchange, which was a
group that was intended to help the unemployed men of
the city make connections to find temporary and permanent work.
He also became heavily involved in the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which was incorporated in eighteen

(40:36):
seventy six. He served in one leadership role or another
with the organization for the rest of his life. That
was a particularly important one to him, and as the
eighteen nineties had moved on, Strauss had stayed busy, even
though he was going through a lot of family tragedy
at the time. He was working with other merchants and
civic leaders to actualize infrastructure projects, including a railroad to

(40:57):
compete with the Southern Pacific. He knew that as city
that was appealing to new residents would mean sustained growth
for the businesses there, so he was constantly donating both
his personal money and on behalf of Levi Straussing Company
to the creation of things like parks or the improvement
of public spaces, and he supported efforts like the Pioneer

(41:17):
Kindergarten Society because he knew that educating children was a
vital part of making a future for the city. He
was not only interested in early childhood education, though, He
also donated to the University of California, Berkeley so they
could keep their library open longer hours, and he created
a scholarship fund at that school that Levi Straus Scholarship
continues to this day. One of Strauss's employees named Henry Richmond,

(41:40):
later wrote of him quote, mister Strauss was very quiet, affable,
always immaculately dressed. Yeah, and he apparently did not like
to be called mister Strauss. He wanted everybody to just
call him Levi. He seems like a lovely, lovely gentleman.
And I also wanted to include as our final note
a point of trivia really to one of our previous episodes,

(42:01):
because Levi Strauss was a founding member of the Pacific
Coast Auxiliary of the Jewish Publication Society of America, and
another member of that group was Ferdinand Toklas, father of
Alice B. Toklas. It's one of those moments where you
just see all the history puzzle pieces starting to click together.
It's all connected, yes, And Levi Strauss is so connected
in many ways like that to California history because you know,

(42:25):
he was on all sorts of like public works committees
and efforts with you know, people like Stanford and other
famed people that really formed a lot of the foundation
of California as we know it today. Yeah, thanks so

(42:45):
much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode
is out of the archive, if you heard an email
address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the
course of the show, that could be obsolete. Now. Our
current email address is History Podcast at I heartradio dot com.
Our old house stuffworks, email address no longer works. You

(43:05):
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(43:26):
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