On this episode of Our American Stories, as part of our "This Week in History" series, we tell the story of an immigrant whose name you probably know—but whose story you likely don't. Levi Strauss left Germany in 1847 in pursuit of the American Dream—and stitched that dream into a pair of blue jeans that changed American culture and fashion forever. Lynn Downey, the official historian of Levi Strauss & Co., tells his remarkable story.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
And this next one, my goodness, it's a great one.
Levi's are an American phenomenon, symbolizing the vitality of the
West to people all over the world. But just as
phenomenal is the story of their creator, the young German
(00:30):
immigrant Levi Strauss. And we're telling this story because blue
jeans were invented on this day in history in eighteen
seventy three. Here to tell this story is Lynn Downey.
Lynn was the first in house historian for Levi Straussen Company.
She's the author of the wonderfully readable biography Levi Strauss,
the man who gave blue jeans to the world. Here's Lynn.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I was hired as the very first historian archivist for
Levi Straussen Co. In nineteen eighty nine, and when I
walked in the door, I was not too surprised that
there weren't any historical records because of this. This is
a picture of the company headquarters April twentieth, nineteen oh six,
after the building has survived the massive earthquake but not
(01:15):
the fire. It's not unusual you go to work for
a company in San Francisco that was founded before the earthquake.
You're not going to have much, so let's start with
his beginning. He was born lub Strauss l o umlaut
b Strauss February twenty sixth, eighteen twenty nine in the
Bavarian town of Butenheim. His father, Heirsh, was a peddler.
(01:36):
His grandparents grandfathers, were cattle traders. Pedling, of course, was
a traditional Jewish occupation. Levi's mother was actually hers Strauss's
second wife. He had five older siblings half siblings, and
then he and his sister Fanny were the son and
daughter of Hersh's second wife. So he grew up going
to the tiny little synagogue and tiny little Butenheim and
(01:57):
going to school. But he, in the entire family, and
every Jewish citizen of Butenheim was living under something called
the Juden Adict. It was a law that had been
passed in eighteen thirteen that was intended to make proper
citizens out of Bavaria's Jews, but really just took away.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So many rites.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
And one of the things that was done to do
this was every village after the uten Adict went into effect,
had to have a list called a matriquel, which was
the list of every citizen in every town, and it had.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Very specific rules.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Only those who were listed on the matrecel could marry
or change their residence within the boundaries of the kingdom.
In addition, the right to marry was limited to the
eldest son in the family. A younger son could marry
only if a childless couple gave up a spot on
the matrechl for him, if he married a widow who
(02:50):
also was on the list, or if he left his
village and married in another, or if a place on
the list opened up. Basically, it was about the list,
and there was a if you were a younger son,
you couldn't marry. There were a lot of unsanctioned unions
and illegitimate births and a lot of these very very
small towns in Bavaria. The other bigger problem that the
(03:12):
en adk had was it did not allow Jews to
carry on their traditional occupations peddling cattle trading, two of
the biggest occupations for the region. Unless you were sort
of grandfathered in and you were too old and you
already had that occupation, you had to take up farming
or small crafts. You had to be a shoemaker or
soap maker or whatever. So the oldest Strauss boy was Yakob.
(03:34):
He could marry, he could do whatever he wanted, but
he still couldn't be a peddler like his dad. Not
to mention the three other boys in the house, they
had no opportunities whatsoever. So in eighteen thirty seven eighteen
young people in Butenheim just got up and left, and
two of them were the two oldest Strauss children, Yakub,
who went to London, and Rosla, the oldest sister, went
to New York.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Three years later. The two other.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Boys went to America, Jonathan who became Jonas and Lippmann,
who became Lewis. They left in eighteen forty and eighteen
forty one went to New York and soon became very prosperous,
and we're sending letters back home about how the good
things were in New York. Then in eighteen forty six,
Hers Strauss dies of tuberculosis, and his wife, Rebecca, has
(04:19):
a big decision to make. She has her own two
children and the young her youngest stepdaughter, and so she
makes the important and necessary decision to go to America. Now,
if you wanted to leave Bavaria and go to America,
you can just get.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Up and leave.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You had to apply to the Bavarian government and tell
them why you wanted to leave, and you had to
make sure you had to tell them why without insulting
the Bavarian government at the same time, and thanks to
the record keeping in the state archives in Bamberg, we
actually have the statement that Levi Strauss himself wrote to
explain the reasons why he was leaving along with his mother.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
It's really very poignant.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
The favorable news that I have received from my step
brothers in America has convinced me to follow them, even
though I do not have at this time a specific occupation.
But my brothers will take care of that. No members
of my family will stay behind. I will share the
fate that has been assigned to me with them in
(05:18):
foreign lands. I thus joined my mother in her plea.
So it was you know, I don't have a career here,
just like my brothers. You know there's no career here,
but I'm going to go to America and I'll have
something to do. This was very important because if you
left Bavaria you had to leave money behind so that
if you've struck out in America or London and came
(05:41):
back home, you were not a burden on the state.
So sometime between spring and autumn eighteen forty eight, Rebecca
Strauss and Herth's three children got on a ship in
Braymen and went off for New York. And you can
read in the book about the ghastly steerage passage that
you had to take to get to New York. And
then they were very happy to finally land in New
(06:04):
York City, and they moved into an area called Klein Deutschland,
which is today basically the lower east side of New York.
But there was so many both Christian and Jewish people
from Germany, it was called Klein Deutschlundt Little Germany. So
they move in with Lewis and Jonas Strauss, who were
urban peddlers. They had store accounts and they would get
(06:27):
stuff wholesale and they would have their own store accounts
and they'd walk around New York and they were basically
urban peddlers. Their business was called Jay Strauss and Brother Jay.
For Jonas the oldest brother, he got to name the
business after him. So Levi jumps in and he starts
learning the business, and he's learning English. And then the
census taker comes around in eighteen fifty takes the names
(06:48):
of everybody in the Strauss household. And then there's someone
named Levi because he changed his name for a number
of reasons, the most important of which was nobody in
America can pronounce Lube.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
The other reason is Levi is a name from the Bible.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
It's very common, everybody knows it, Christian and jew So
it seem like the appropriate name for him to take
for basically his business name, although it's very likely, of course,
they called him.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
A little at home.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And you're listening to Lynn Downey telling this story, the
great immigrant story of Levi Strauss. More of this remarkable
American story continues here on our American Stories. Folks, if
you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
(07:37):
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale. Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
(07:58):
to learn more. And we continue here with our American stories.
And having learned why the Strauss family left Bavaria and
my goodness, why would you stay with these kinds of
(08:18):
laws and rules. And we're telling this story because blue
jeans were invented on this day in history in eighteen
seventy three. Let's continue with Lynn Downey, this remarkable storyteller,
and the story of Levi Strauss.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Then the gold Rush happens and all these reports are
coming back all the Jews, so many Jewish merchants are
coming out to San Francisco and Auburn and all of
the little gold Rush towns, and they're setting up retail stores,
and they're writing their families back home saying, come.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Out to California. The opportunities here are amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And if you wanted to come to California and go
into business, you had two opportunities. You could be the wholesaler,
could stay in San Francisco, bring in the goods from
New York and have your retail accounts up in the
gold Rush country. Or you could have your small retail
stores up there. It was this amazing sort of umbilical
cord between New York, San Francisco, and the Gold Country.
So sometime in eighteen fifty two, the Strauss family decides
(09:16):
to send Levi to California to basically open up the
West Coast branch of Jay Strauss, brother and Co. But
he had something very important to do before he could leave,
and on January thirty first, eighteen fifty three, he became
an American citizen. He had registered for naturalization almost the
minute he got off the boat in eighteen forty eight
and became a citizen, and five days later he was
(09:38):
on a steamer for the Isthmus of Panama. Now there
were many ways to get to San Francisco. The fastest
was to cross the Isthmus of Panama. It was no
less dangerous, but it was fast. So what you did
was you took a steamer from New York to the
Caribbean side of the Isthmus. And then in eighteen fifty three,
you could only take a railroad halfway across because it
(09:58):
wasn't finished, and you had to take a boat on
the Chagras River. And then depending on what time of
year you were there for him, it was February. You
just stopped at Gordagona and then you rented a mule
from Wills Fargo, took the mule all the way down
to Panama City on the Pacific side, got another Pacific
Coast Pacific Mail steamship company up to San Francisco, which
is what Levi did, so he crossed the Isthmus. He
(10:21):
turned twenty four years old twenty four on the trip up.
I think he had just passed Acapulco on his way
to San Francisco, and he landed here on March fourteenth,
eighteen fifty three. So he's a very serious young man.
And again records are scarce, but I am almost positive
that he arrived in California with letters of introduction from
(10:43):
merchants in New York that he could take up to
the gold Rush country to a store and say. The
letter would say, I'd like to introduce you to mister
Levi Strauss.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
He's new in business. Please give him your custom.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
He'd probably also arranged to have a warehouse near the
waterfront where he could store the dry goods that has
had already put on a clipper ship that was going
around the horn, and it's very likely he slept in
that warehouse. I found a lot of letters and diaries
and newspaper accounts of young merchants sleeping in their warehouses
on a mattress and blanket where the fleas don't let
(11:14):
me sleep.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
We all know how fleaor in San Francisco was so.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
One of the very first customers that we know of
that Levi found was the store Harding and Kennedy in
Forest Hill, which is near Auburn. And this is the
sort of collection of dry goods that his brothers would
send them pants, shirts, boots, children's clothing, lace, Monthia's for ladies.
Dry goods was basically anything that wasn't.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Hardware or food.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
It was sort of the soft goods of everyday living.
And this is what he was bringing in and he
cultivated all these retail clients and he started this sort
of web beginning in California, which very kept ongoing when
the civil ward came to California. Levi was, by the way,
a Abraham Lincoln Republican. He voted for Lincoln in eighteen
sixty and eighteen sixty four. He gave a lot of
(12:00):
he and the company gave a lot of money to
the Sanitary Commission, which were those organizations that helped to
create better conditions in hospitals and battlefield medical units to
keep soldiers healthy d During the Civil War, he joined
something called the Committee of thirty four, which kept their
eyes open looking for any treasonable combinations or conspiracies against
(12:22):
the Union and the public peace. And there was reason
for that because there were a lot of Southern sympathizers
in California and San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
It was a very real threat. Levi Strauss and Co.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
As well as many others, prospered during the Civil War
because Eastern American ports were blockaded, so California wheat and
wool and dry goods were able to get to Great
Britain and make a lot of money during the Civil War.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
So he did prosper.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
He did do well, and in late there were mid
to late eighteen fifties, his sister Fanny and her husband
David Stern and their children moved from New York out
to San Francisco to live with Levi. So he was
here for alone for the first three years that he
lived here. It was on a battery between Pine and California.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
I believe. It was a beautiful, beautiful building. And they had.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Started off at just fourteen sixteen Battery Street, and by
the time of the earthquake it was ten to twenty
four Battery Street.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
They had like basically the entire block.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
So the company had been just Levi Strauss, but by
the time of by about eighteen sixty three, it was
Levi Strauss and Co.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
The family was here.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
His sister Mary had passed away and her husband was
now out here as well with his children, so it
was really becoming a family business.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Now. It was easy to make money and San Francisco,
but it was also easy to lose it.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
What Levi regularly did was put gold called treasure my
favorite historical word, treasure onto Pacific mail steamships that went
down to the Isthmus were carted across the Isthmus, put
on another steamer to go up to New York and
that goal. He sent that gold to his others to
go into the bank to buy more dry goods. Well
he had the company had seventy six thousand dollars in
(14:06):
gold on the Central America, which is this boat which
went down in a hurricane off of South Carolina in
September of eighteen fifty seven. That's about two million dollars
of value today. Now, some people found that boat in
the nineteen eighties, but it's very likely the company did
get an insurance payment. They were very good about making
sure that those a lot of those shipments were insured.
(14:30):
Levi I had a pretty good sales force set up
by the eighteen seventies. And what's really interesting is that
Levi had dry goods customers in Mexico, Canada, and Hawaii
in the late eighteen sixties and early eighteen seventies. He
really early understood the value of the Pacific rim, which
I find very fascinating. Soph He thinks, going to you know,
(14:51):
I'm going to be a wholesaler for the rest of
my life.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I'm prosperous.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
You know, my family is growing, my sister and her
husband are having more kids.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
The business is doing great.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
A happy capitalist, and that's what he thought he'd do
for the rest of his life until eighteen seventy two
when he got a letter from Jacob Davis, who was
born Yakob Uphus in Riga which is now Latvia, which
at the time was Russia. One of those four places
that gets bopped all over the map throughout history, but
it was Russia at the time. He came to the
(15:20):
United States in eighteen fifty four, worked in the East.
He was trained as a tailor as a teenager back
in Latvia, Russia. He came to California in late eighteen
fifty four, decided to try the whole gold mining thing
and it didn't really work. So he had changed his
name to Davis by this time, so he was kind
of went all over the place, and he was by
the mid eighteen sixties, he was up in Canada.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
He got married, started to have.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
A family, ran a brewery, but every time he sort
of didn't make it very well.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
He would go back to tailoring.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
In eighteen sixty seven, he was in Virginia City, which is,
you know, one of the hubs of the comstock you know,
mining regions, and he described it as a populated of
fifteen thousand people, of which five thousand were mine, about
five thousand of bummers, gamblers and prostitutes, and about five
thousands of businessmen, speculators, and capitalists. Then in eighteen sixty
(16:09):
eight he moved to Reno. Literally days after Reno had
been officially established. Was clustered, built up and clustered around
the Central Pacific Railroad, like the local business has supported
mining and agriculture. And he's set up there as a
tailor and he by this time was making tent covers,
horse blankets, and wagon covers. So in December eighteen seventy
(16:32):
January eighteen seventy one, a woman walks into his tailoring
shop and says, my husband, he's a new pair of pants,
but they've all fallen apart. He literally can't even go
out in public. So I'm here to ask you to
make a pair of pants for my husband. So he
sends the wife back to her husband with a string
and says, please measure his waist. So she comes back
and she says, would you please do something to make
(16:52):
these pants.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Not fall apart?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
My husband just goes through these pants like I just
can't believe. So he was working with a fabric called duck.
It's a kind of a Liden canvas. It comes to
the Dutch for canvas and it's pretty sturdy stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
It kind of an off white. And then he had
an over on a table.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
He had some horse blankets and he used to reinforce
the seams and the stress points of horse.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Blankets with rivets, and he looks up at.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
The table and he thinks, huh, I wonder if I
could put some rivets in these pants, if they would
hold together better.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
So he did.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
You're hearing how innovation occurs and by whom in this
great country, and from the oddist circumstances, and often just
trying to solve a problem. Our great business franchise is born.
My goodness, what a story. We're hearing the story of
Levi Strauss. It's being told by Lynn Downeye. More of
this remarkable story, this American story, Levi Strauss's story here
(17:51):
on our American stories, and we continue here with our
American stories and the story of Levi Strauss. Let's return
(18:14):
to our storyteller Lynn Downey.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
He put rivets in the pocket corners, the base of
the button fly held on the little strap in the
back that they had before belt loops, gives them to
the woman. He sees the guy walking around town wearing
his pants, and the guy was really, really happy. And
then people start hearing about these pants of Jacob Davis's,
and they're coming into his shop and asking to buy
some more. So he realizes he's got a big sort
(18:39):
of money making idea in his hands.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
And he was a frustrated.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Inventor, actually a partly successful inventor. He actually had a
patent for a type of clothes press already, and he
really he always thought big and he wanted to mass
manufacture and mass market these pants. So a lot of
the fabric he had in his tailoring shop he got
from Levi straussenk So he knew that name, Levi Strauss.
He knew the reputation of Levi Strauss.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
So what does he do.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
He has this money making idea, he sends examples of
the pants down to Levi Wells Fargo Express and with
the letter that says, here is a big money making idea.
Let's be partners and do this together. Well, you know
that shows a lot of trust, you have to admit.
I mean, what would have prevented Levi from running off
with the idea. But of course he knew Levi's reputation
(19:26):
and he knew he wouldn't do that. He also knew
that even though Levi wasn't a manufacturer, he thought big.
It was a big idea guy, and he would probably
think this was a big idea, And he literally did
and the documents that are in copies of which are
in the National Archives in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
There's this handwritten pencil note note.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
To lawyer, right to this guy, sign him up like now,
I mean literally days after he wrote this letter in
July of eighteen seventy two. So the patent was awarded
after three tries with the Patent Office on May twenty
at eighteen seventy three, for an improvement in fastening pocket openings,
which which is really boring language for basically the invention.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Of the blue jeen. So this is it gets pretty
exciting right off the bat.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
There's a magazine published out of San Francisco called Pacific
Rural Press, very influential with ranchers, farmers, a lot of
people who make farm machinery, whatever, the kind of people
who would wear really tough, riveted pants. And they had
a little article about the pants in one of their issues,
and I want to read you a little bit of it.
(20:29):
So they talk about this invention seems very simple, but
it's really very effective, and we are sure it's going
to become quite popular amongst our working men. Nothing looks
more slouchy in a workman than to see his pockets
ripped open and hanging down, and no other part of
the clothing is so apt to be torn and ripped
as the pockets. Besides its slouchy appearance, it is inconvenient
(20:53):
and often results in the person losing things from his pockets.
All right, seriously, I really don't think the guys were
worried that their pants looks slouchy, you know. But the
point was there would be no more slouchy pockets because
they had rivets. Those pockets had rivets in them. So
the first pants were made of denim, basically denham does
was created first in France, probably in the seventeenth century,
(21:15):
and it was a serge fabric, a type of weave
from the town of Nime, and so it was serge dunim.
And so by the time English textile manufacturers were making it,
they were calling sege denim because even though you have
an English fabric, if you give it a zippy French name,
you know, it's really good marketing. But eventually they anglicized
the word to denim, and then by the eighteenth century
(21:38):
when American textile mill started to make denim, it was
always in English denim, and it was always all cotton,
even though in the very beginning was actually a wool
and silk blend. George Washington toured a Massachusetts textile mill
in seventeen eighty nine and watched Denham being made, so
you know there and there are still people who write
and say that Levi got the denim from France for
his first Genes, and they tended to all those stories.
(22:00):
In France, it was like no firsty. The first Janes
were made of denim, and the Denham came from the
Amazgag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was the
biggest textile mill in the country and they did make
the very best denim in the United States. There were
no denim mills or textile mills in California. Levi I
did have to go all the way to Manchester, New Hampshire.
(22:22):
There was a fabric called Gene j e a n
which was being made at the same time as Denham,
and it tended to be indigo blue, just like Denham was.
It was easily absorbed by the cotton. You know, it
was a color that everybody liked. You know. Whatever pants
made of gene fabric were called Genes. And actually Kentucky
Jeans was a very specific type of pant, and it
(22:45):
originally was made in Kentucky, but again it was one
of those things everybody knew what Kentucky jens were, and
they were made in other places, but not necessarily always
in Kentucky. But it was made of gene fabric. Denham
is one colored thread and one white thread together. Jeane
fabric was two threads of the same color, so it
looked like denim, but it didn't have you know, denim
(23:06):
will have that white that kind of will kind of
the fill will come through a little bit. Geene fabric
was just you know, blue so jeans. Levi Strauss sold
jeans pants and his Draga's inventory before the genes were invented.
Here's why we call them jeans today. So men had
worn unriveted denim pants for a long time and they
(23:27):
were just called, you know, denim overalls. When Levi Strauss
and Jacob Davis put rivets in those for the first time,
it created a new category of workwar which is the
blue gene. But they were called overalls until about the
nineteen fifties, and then teenage boys who saw Marlon Brando
wear five o' one jeans and movies was, you know,
scary motorcycle guy. They wanted to be like him, and
(23:47):
they wanted to wear those pants, but their dads called
them overalls, so they started calling them jeans. They didn't
want to wear overalls like their dad. They had to
be jeans, cool jeans, pants like Marlon Brando did. I
don't even really know why they appropriated that word, but
it was the new word, you know. It was just
a new word for the pants that were already there,
(24:07):
and it was a new modern word for something that
had been around since the eighteen seventies. The changes of
the Jenes went over time and usually were because of
changes in fashion and wanting to modernize, you know, what
the genes were. So the rivets on the back pockets
were always on the outside. But then in the nineteen
twenties and thirties, the company was getting complaints saying, your
(24:28):
ribbts are scratching our saddles and our school decks and
our car hoods, which I don't know about that, and
so what the company did was put the rivets in
the pockets. But then so the pockets over so the
ribbts were there, but then they you know, they wouldn't
scratch but they were eventually taken out completely. And I
think nineteen sixty seven there was a rivet at the
base of the button fly, the indelicately named Karach rivet,
(24:52):
and there was all this anecdotal evidence. You know, people
were writing in, you know, when we crouched in front
of a campfire, this rivet heats up in a really
delicate place, and the company is like, what a bunch
of whimpy cowboys. And then it happened to the president
of the company, mister Walter Hawes. But about that time
(25:15):
it was World War two had started and American clothing
manufacturers had to take a certain amount of metal off
of their clothing. And so I'm sure there was a
meeting at the company's like, Okay, nobody likes this rivet.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
We have to get rid of some rivets. It's going.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
So they had, you know, they had to find a
place to set up shop. The company didn't have didn't
own any manufacturing space until the eighteen eighties, so this
is eighteen seventy three, so they least a space on
Market Street, and they had to advertise for women to
sew the pants.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
And so here's a typical ad.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
This was in the San Francisco Chronicle, I believe in
July of eighteen seventy three wanted fifty first class female
sewing machine operators.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Who can bring their own machines.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
With them, either Singers number two or Grover and Bake
number one for sewing, heavy work, steady and remunerative employment
at four fifteen Market Street, upstairs.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
All right.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I read this and I thought, oh my god, I've
got this image of these poor women, you know, dragging
these machines up Market Street. But they really were very
small and very portable at this time, and it was
actually apparently not that unusual for.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
The women to take them around with them.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
But eventually the company did get some sewing machines so
the women didn't have to bring their own. So Levi
had brought Jacob Davis from Reno to be in charge
of the manufacturing, and Levi stayed with the dry goods.
That's what he knew, that was his business. So Jacob
was in charge. Jacob and his family lived on Folsom Street,
fairly near the to the least and the new factories.
(26:43):
And he became a Levi, Strauss and Company employee.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And you're listening to Lynn Downey and she's the author
of Levi Strauss, the man who gave blue jeans to
the world. And my goodness, what a story of innovation,
of opportunism, and in the end of pure flex and
seeing something new and going for it. When we come
back more of this remarkable story of free enterprise, of
(27:08):
freedom and the country itself, the story of blue jeans.
They were created on this day in history in eighteen
seventy three. Here on our American stories. And we continue
(27:37):
here on how American stories with the story of Levi Strauss,
as told by Lynn Downey. And we're telling this story
because blue jeans were invented on this day in history
in eighteen seventy three. Let's conclude with the final chapter
of this story.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
These pants were called overalls because in the old days,
that's what working pants were called. If you wanted like overalls,
you had to ask for those specifically either engineer overalls,
bib overalls. But if he asked for waste overalls or
just overalls, you got what we today called blue jeans.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And this was workware. This was pure workware.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
The denim, this nineteenth century denim, was really really tough.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
They wear like iron.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Was an early advertising slogan, and it's very very true.
So among the early consumers were, of course cowboys, and
that stayed as a classic consumer for a very very
long time. Miners of course, and agricultural workers. But there
was one person, one very important person, who never wore
(28:39):
a pair of jeans in his life, and that was
Leavie Strauss. It would be completely inappropriate for him to
wear jeans. He was not a laborer. He was a
wealthy businessman. He was a capitalist. He wore a black
broadcloth suit, a silk tie, and carried a top hat.
So manufacturing is going on, and the company was making
(29:01):
a lot of flyers for the salespeople to give to
potential retail clients, and a lot of them were saying
something called home industry, and this was nineteenth century code
for the fact that they only hired white women and
girls in the factory. And this is one of the
pieces of Levi history that is classic and standard for
San Francisco history that I have the blessing of Bob
(29:22):
Hajj and the entire has family to talk about, because
that's how they told me to write this book, which
is that Levi Strauss did not hire Chinese in his
factory because the discrimination in San Francisco was about the Chinese.
The railroad had been completed in eighteen sixty nine, there
were no more jobs white men. Chinese men were coming
into San Francisco to look for jobs. There was a
lot of hateful rhetoric and violence, and people didn't want
(29:46):
their clothes bade by filthy Chinese who lived in that
strange place called Chinatown and ate strange food, and some
of it ended up on Levi Strauss in company advertising.
This is a priceless that would have gone to a
retail store said manufactured by white labor, and there's quite
a few of those. For a while, it was even
stamped on the inside of the pocket bag of the jeans.
(30:08):
It was a selling point. It was a point of
pride for the company. I don't know how Levi Strauss
personally felt about the Chinese, but as a businessman, he
knew that there was no way that he could sell
his product and keep his business unless he adhere to
the prevailing prejudice.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
We don't like it.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
It's ugly, it's icky, but it's real, and that is
who he was. That's one of the reasons that and
I'll talk about this later. That I find him so
fascinated is because he's not predictable, and he's complicated, and
maybe at times he might might not have been very
easy to like, but that's why he was so interesting
to me. About a year after Levi rot in San Francisco,
(30:49):
he made his first charitable contribution. It was five dollars
to the San Francisco Orphan Asylum Society, which today, by
the way, is the Edgewoch Center for Children and Families
that still as out in the Sun District, still in business.
And that was the beginning of a life long process
of philanthropy that was personally important to him but also
very much.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
A tenant of his Jewish faith.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
We know, it's really easy to track his giving because
a lot of it showed up in the newspapers, and
I can there are personal donations that he made and
corporate donations, and when you see what I evaluated all
where all his money went, you can see what went
most to him personally. A lot of his money went
to take care of young people and to educate young people.
(31:34):
So he's becoming this amazing philanthropist. But the business is,
you know, keeps ongoing, and he and a lot of
his other managers know that when you have a patent
on something, So they had an actual patent on the
process of making riveted clothing.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
You don't get to keep that forever. It's not like
a trademark.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Eventually, inventions have to benefit the public domain. So they
knew in eighteen ninety two that patent was going to
run out and anybody who wanted to, you could start
making revenue clothing. Oh my god, So what the As
we get closer and closer to the eighteen nineties, the
company started basically branding the product in eighteen eighty six,
the famous two horse poll.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
We don't know if it was rever real. We don't know.
People have tried.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
First went on the pants, was put on the patch
on the pants and also used in print, on flyers,
on invoices everywhere, blanketed everything with this logo. And it
was partly branding. But I have a feeling there was
another reason for this. So not everybody in the American
West was literate, and not everybody in the American West
(32:37):
spoke English as their first language.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
And if you go into store and.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
There's some competitors, you know product there and you don't
speak English, or you don't read, you could say, oh,
I want the one with the two horses. You know,
you can point to the picture of the brand that
you want. It was very, very smart marketing and I
think probably fairly common. But that and the product was
called the two Horse brand until nineteen twenty seven, when
(33:02):
the company had to register the name Levi's as a
trademark because Levi's was becoming a generic like Kleenex. But
forever it was the two Horse brand. So in about
eighteen ninety the company started to assign three digit lot
numbers to all of its products. And that's when we
first see it's eighteen ninety or eighteen ninety two, this
famous five.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Oh one, And here's where we.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Have one of those you know, I need to drink
my dinner at night kind of days when people would
tell me, oh, I know where the number.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Five oh one came from. No, you don't. Nobody knows.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
There was newspaper advertising and funky you know, the Body
Courier and funky newspapers all over the West. Really interesting
visual you know, display ads as well with strong and durable,
you know, great language. And this goes along with other
stories that I found in letters of people had had
(33:53):
written to the company all you know, early of the
century that his employees called him Levi. He wasn't mister
strat even and his customers, you know, called him Levi.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
He did not have this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
You know, this barrier between himself and the men who
wore you know, jeans or or people that were you know,
his customers. He really appeared to be a truly personable
and apparently a guy with a great sense of humor.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Levi never married.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
He moved in with his sister Fanny and her family
when he was in his early forties, and then she
passed away, and then he lived with his oldest nephew,
who was Jacob Stern. And it was Jacob Stern's house
where he was living when he passed away, and that
was the house that went down in nineteen oh six.
He died on September twenty sixth, nineteen oh two. He
was seventy three years old. He had not even really
(34:40):
been ill. He maybe hadn't felt so good for a
couple of days, and went to bed after dinner and
went to sleep and never woke up.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
The funeral was held out of his home.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Jacob Voorsanger, the Rabbi of Temple Emmanuel gave the eulogy.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
They had a special.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Train to go down to Home of Peace and Coolma.
They closed the business for the day so all the
employees could come to the funeral. You know, people always
say nice things about people at your funeral, right, But
I have a feeling that every wonderful thing that was
said about Levi was true, and everything seemed so very
very sincere. And then there were so many obituaries and
articles about him in newspapers after his death that just
(35:15):
seemed to echo everything that the Rabbi had said.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
That makes me really feel that it was very very true.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
So the earthquake and fire happens, the building goes down,
and he had left the business to his four nephews.
He had four nephews and three nieces. In his will,
he left the business, which is the majority of his business,
to the nephews. He left lots of money to orphanages,
mostly orphanages and what were called the Benevolent associations. These
were organizations mostly for the Jewish indigent, widows and orphans,
(35:44):
people who weren't able to take care of themselves. There
was the Eureka Ben Benevolent Society, the first Hebrew Benevolent Society.
He left a lot of money to them, and then
he left each of his nieces twenty five thousand dollars,
not to their husbands to administer for them, but directly
to his nieces, and then the bulk of the business
to his four nephews. His estate, by the way, was
valued at six million dollars and that's six million, nineteen
(36:07):
oh two dollars. So the four nephews didn't have to work.
They were incredibly wealthy. They had real estate. They could
have just skated on their money the rest of their lives,
but they didn't do that. They rebuilt the company. They
rebuilt the building on the very same place. It was
ninety eight Battery. This building is still there. It's at
the corner of Pine and the company was there from
(36:28):
nineteen oh eight until the nineteen seventies when they went
to Inbarcadero Center. So the Stern brothers also kept the
company name. They could have started over. They could have said, oh,
now we're Stern Brothers. No, it was Levi, Strauss and Co.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Again.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
So the family to the family that owns the company
to day is the Hawes family. So Le's. One of
Levi Streuss's nephews was Sigmund Stern. You've all heard of
Sigmund Stern Grove. Well, that was Levi's nephew, Sigmund, and
he and his wife had a daughter named Elise, and
Elise Stern married mister Walter Hawes senior, the gentleman in
this photo, and it's his descendants that own the company today.
(37:09):
His grandson, Bob Hawes, is the man who hired me
for my job as historian, and he is the reason
I call Levi uncle Levi because he is the great
great grand nephew of Levi Strauss himself. And it is
a Hawes family that of course still owns the company now.
Jacob Davis sold his interest in the patent back to
the company about nineteen oh six, and then he died
(37:31):
in nineteen oh eight. His son Simon worked for Levi's
for about twenty years and then he left and started
his own clothing business, which didn't really.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Do very well.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Then in nineteen thirty five he opened another business which
he named after his son, and that is still in
business today, which is Ben Davis the work clothing company
with the little gorilla on the label Ben Davis is
Jacob Davis's grandson, and they're still in business today.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
And you've been listening to Lynn Downey telling the story
of Levi Strauss, her biography, Levi Strauss, the man who
gave blue jeans to the world. The Levi Strauss Story,
an American dreamer story like none we've ever told, as
good as ever we have told here on our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
And this next one, my goodness, it's a great one.
Levi's are an American phenomenon, symbolizing the vitality of the
West to people all over the world. But just as
phenomenal is the story of their creator, the young German
(00:30):
immigrant Levi Strauss. And we're telling this story because blue
jeans were invented on this day in history in eighteen
seventy three. Here to tell this story is Lynn Downey.
Lynn was the first in house historian for Levi Straussen Company.
She's the author of the wonderfully readable biography Levi Strauss,
the man who gave blue jeans to the world. Here's Lynn.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I was hired as the very first historian archivist for
Levi Straussen Co. In nineteen eighty nine, and when I
walked in the door, I was not too surprised that
there weren't any historical records because of this. This is
a picture of the company headquarters April twentieth, nineteen oh six,
after the building has survived the massive earthquake but not
(01:15):
the fire. It's not unusual you go to work for
a company in San Francisco that was founded before the earthquake.
You're not going to have much, so let's start with
his beginning. He was born lub Strauss l o umlaut
b Strauss February twenty sixth, eighteen twenty nine in the
Bavarian town of Butenheim. His father, Heirsh, was a peddler.
(01:36):
His grandparents grandfathers, were cattle traders. Pedling, of course, was
a traditional Jewish occupation. Levi's mother was actually hers Strauss's
second wife. He had five older siblings half siblings, and
then he and his sister Fanny were the son and
daughter of Hersh's second wife. So he grew up going
to the tiny little synagogue and tiny little Butenheim and
(01:57):
going to school. But he, in the entire family, and
every Jewish citizen of Butenheim was living under something called
the Juden Adict. It was a law that had been
passed in eighteen thirteen that was intended to make proper
citizens out of Bavaria's Jews, but really just took away.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
So many rites.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
And one of the things that was done to do
this was every village after the uten Adict went into effect,
had to have a list called a matriquel, which was
the list of every citizen in every town, and it had.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Very specific rules.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Only those who were listed on the matrecel could marry
or change their residence within the boundaries of the kingdom.
In addition, the right to marry was limited to the
eldest son in the family. A younger son could marry
only if a childless couple gave up a spot on
the matrechl for him, if he married a widow who
(02:50):
also was on the list, or if he left his
village and married in another, or if a place on
the list opened up. Basically, it was about the list,
and there was a if you were a younger son,
you couldn't marry. There were a lot of unsanctioned unions
and illegitimate births and a lot of these very very
small towns in Bavaria. The other bigger problem that the
(03:12):
en adk had was it did not allow Jews to
carry on their traditional occupations peddling cattle trading, two of
the biggest occupations for the region. Unless you were sort
of grandfathered in and you were too old and you
already had that occupation, you had to take up farming
or small crafts. You had to be a shoemaker or
soap maker or whatever. So the oldest Strauss boy was Yakob.
(03:34):
He could marry, he could do whatever he wanted, but
he still couldn't be a peddler like his dad. Not
to mention the three other boys in the house, they
had no opportunities whatsoever. So in eighteen thirty seven eighteen
young people in Butenheim just got up and left, and
two of them were the two oldest Strauss children, Yakub,
who went to London, and Rosla, the oldest sister, went
to New York.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Three years later. The two other.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Boys went to America, Jonathan who became Jonas and Lippmann,
who became Lewis. They left in eighteen forty and eighteen
forty one went to New York and soon became very prosperous,
and we're sending letters back home about how the good
things were in New York. Then in eighteen forty six,
Hers Strauss dies of tuberculosis, and his wife, Rebecca, has
(04:19):
a big decision to make. She has her own two
children and the young her youngest stepdaughter, and so she
makes the important and necessary decision to go to America. Now,
if you wanted to leave Bavaria and go to America,
you can just get.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Up and leave.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You had to apply to the Bavarian government and tell
them why you wanted to leave, and you had to
make sure you had to tell them why without insulting
the Bavarian government at the same time, and thanks to
the record keeping in the state archives in Bamberg, we
actually have the statement that Levi Strauss himself wrote to
explain the reasons why he was leaving along with his mother.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
It's really very poignant.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
The favorable news that I have received from my step
brothers in America has convinced me to follow them, even
though I do not have at this time a specific occupation.
But my brothers will take care of that. No members
of my family will stay behind. I will share the
fate that has been assigned to me with them in
(05:18):
foreign lands. I thus joined my mother in her plea.
So it was you know, I don't have a career here,
just like my brothers. You know there's no career here,
but I'm going to go to America and I'll have
something to do. This was very important because if you
left Bavaria you had to leave money behind so that
if you've struck out in America or London and came
(05:41):
back home, you were not a burden on the state.
So sometime between spring and autumn eighteen forty eight, Rebecca
Strauss and Herth's three children got on a ship in
Braymen and went off for New York. And you can
read in the book about the ghastly steerage passage that
you had to take to get to New York. And
then they were very happy to finally land in New
(06:04):
York City, and they moved into an area called Klein Deutschland,
which is today basically the lower east side of New York.
But there was so many both Christian and Jewish people
from Germany, it was called Klein Deutschlundt Little Germany. So
they move in with Lewis and Jonas Strauss, who were
urban peddlers. They had store accounts and they would get
(06:27):
stuff wholesale and they would have their own store accounts
and they'd walk around New York and they were basically
urban peddlers. Their business was called Jay Strauss and Brother Jay.
For Jonas the oldest brother, he got to name the
business after him. So Levi jumps in and he starts
learning the business, and he's learning English. And then the
census taker comes around in eighteen fifty takes the names
(06:48):
of everybody in the Strauss household. And then there's someone
named Levi because he changed his name for a number
of reasons, the most important of which was nobody in
America can pronounce Lube.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
The other reason is Levi is a name from the Bible.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
It's very common, everybody knows it, Christian and jew So
it seem like the appropriate name for him to take
for basically his business name, although it's very likely, of course,
they called him.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
A little at home.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
And you're listening to Lynn Downey telling this story, the
great immigrant story of Levi Strauss. More of this remarkable
American story continues here on our American Stories. Folks, if
you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
(07:37):
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale. Hillsdale will come to you with their
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
(07:58):
to learn more. And we continue here with our American stories.
And having learned why the Strauss family left Bavaria and
my goodness, why would you stay with these kinds of
(08:18):
laws and rules. And we're telling this story because blue
jeans were invented on this day in history in eighteen
seventy three. Let's continue with Lynn Downey, this remarkable storyteller,
and the story of Levi Strauss.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Then the gold Rush happens and all these reports are
coming back all the Jews, so many Jewish merchants are
coming out to San Francisco and Auburn and all of
the little gold Rush towns, and they're setting up retail stores,
and they're writing their families back home saying, come.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Out to California. The opportunities here are amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And if you wanted to come to California and go
into business, you had two opportunities. You could be the wholesaler,
could stay in San Francisco, bring in the goods from
New York and have your retail accounts up in the
gold Rush country. Or you could have your small retail
stores up there. It was this amazing sort of umbilical
cord between New York, San Francisco, and the Gold Country.
So sometime in eighteen fifty two, the Strauss family decides
(09:16):
to send Levi to California to basically open up the
West Coast branch of Jay Strauss, brother and Co. But
he had something very important to do before he could leave,
and on January thirty first, eighteen fifty three, he became
an American citizen. He had registered for naturalization almost the
minute he got off the boat in eighteen forty eight
and became a citizen, and five days later he was
(09:38):
on a steamer for the Isthmus of Panama. Now there
were many ways to get to San Francisco. The fastest
was to cross the Isthmus of Panama. It was no
less dangerous, but it was fast. So what you did
was you took a steamer from New York to the
Caribbean side of the Isthmus. And then in eighteen fifty three,
you could only take a railroad halfway across because it
(09:58):
wasn't finished, and you had to take a boat on
the Chagras River. And then depending on what time of
year you were there for him, it was February. You
just stopped at Gordagona and then you rented a mule
from Wills Fargo, took the mule all the way down
to Panama City on the Pacific side, got another Pacific
Coast Pacific Mail steamship company up to San Francisco, which
is what Levi did, so he crossed the Isthmus. He
(10:21):
turned twenty four years old twenty four on the trip up.
I think he had just passed Acapulco on his way
to San Francisco, and he landed here on March fourteenth,
eighteen fifty three. So he's a very serious young man.
And again records are scarce, but I am almost positive
that he arrived in California with letters of introduction from
(10:43):
merchants in New York that he could take up to
the gold Rush country to a store and say. The
letter would say, I'd like to introduce you to mister
Levi Strauss.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
He's new in business. Please give him your custom.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
He'd probably also arranged to have a warehouse near the
waterfront where he could store the dry goods that has
had already put on a clipper ship that was going
around the horn, and it's very likely he slept in
that warehouse. I found a lot of letters and diaries
and newspaper accounts of young merchants sleeping in their warehouses
on a mattress and blanket where the fleas don't let
(11:14):
me sleep.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
We all know how fleaor in San Francisco was so.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
One of the very first customers that we know of
that Levi found was the store Harding and Kennedy in
Forest Hill, which is near Auburn. And this is the
sort of collection of dry goods that his brothers would
send them pants, shirts, boots, children's clothing, lace, Monthia's for ladies.
Dry goods was basically anything that wasn't.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Hardware or food.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
It was sort of the soft goods of everyday living.
And this is what he was bringing in and he
cultivated all these retail clients and he started this sort
of web beginning in California, which very kept ongoing when
the civil ward came to California. Levi was, by the way,
a Abraham Lincoln Republican. He voted for Lincoln in eighteen
sixty and eighteen sixty four. He gave a lot of
(12:00):
he and the company gave a lot of money to
the Sanitary Commission, which were those organizations that helped to
create better conditions in hospitals and battlefield medical units to
keep soldiers healthy d During the Civil War, he joined
something called the Committee of thirty four, which kept their
eyes open looking for any treasonable combinations or conspiracies against
(12:22):
the Union and the public peace. And there was reason
for that because there were a lot of Southern sympathizers
in California and San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
It was a very real threat. Levi Strauss and Co.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
As well as many others, prospered during the Civil War
because Eastern American ports were blockaded, so California wheat and
wool and dry goods were able to get to Great
Britain and make a lot of money during the Civil War.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
So he did prosper.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
He did do well, and in late there were mid
to late eighteen fifties, his sister Fanny and her husband
David Stern and their children moved from New York out
to San Francisco to live with Levi. So he was
here for alone for the first three years that he
lived here. It was on a battery between Pine and California.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
I believe. It was a beautiful, beautiful building. And they had.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Started off at just fourteen sixteen Battery Street, and by
the time of the earthquake it was ten to twenty
four Battery Street.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
They had like basically the entire block.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
So the company had been just Levi Strauss, but by
the time of by about eighteen sixty three, it was
Levi Strauss and Co.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
The family was here.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
His sister Mary had passed away and her husband was
now out here as well with his children, so it
was really becoming a family business.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Now. It was easy to make money and San Francisco,
but it was also easy to lose it.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
What Levi regularly did was put gold called treasure my
favorite historical word, treasure onto Pacific mail steamships that went
down to the Isthmus were carted across the Isthmus, put
on another steamer to go up to New York and
that goal. He sent that gold to his others to
go into the bank to buy more dry goods. Well
he had the company had seventy six thousand dollars in
(14:06):
gold on the Central America, which is this boat which
went down in a hurricane off of South Carolina in
September of eighteen fifty seven. That's about two million dollars
of value today. Now, some people found that boat in
the nineteen eighties, but it's very likely the company did
get an insurance payment. They were very good about making
sure that those a lot of those shipments were insured.
(14:30):
Levi I had a pretty good sales force set up
by the eighteen seventies. And what's really interesting is that
Levi had dry goods customers in Mexico, Canada, and Hawaii
in the late eighteen sixties and early eighteen seventies. He
really early understood the value of the Pacific rim, which
I find very fascinating. Soph He thinks, going to you know,
(14:51):
I'm going to be a wholesaler for the rest of
my life.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I'm prosperous.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
You know, my family is growing, my sister and her
husband are having more kids.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
The business is doing great.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
A happy capitalist, and that's what he thought he'd do
for the rest of his life until eighteen seventy two
when he got a letter from Jacob Davis, who was
born Yakob Uphus in Riga which is now Latvia, which
at the time was Russia. One of those four places
that gets bopped all over the map throughout history, but
it was Russia at the time. He came to the
(15:20):
United States in eighteen fifty four, worked in the East.
He was trained as a tailor as a teenager back
in Latvia, Russia. He came to California in late eighteen
fifty four, decided to try the whole gold mining thing
and it didn't really work. So he had changed his
name to Davis by this time, so he was kind
of went all over the place, and he was by
the mid eighteen sixties, he was up in Canada.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
He got married, started to have.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
A family, ran a brewery, but every time he sort
of didn't make it very well.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
He would go back to tailoring.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
In eighteen sixty seven, he was in Virginia City, which is,
you know, one of the hubs of the comstock you know,
mining regions, and he described it as a populated of
fifteen thousand people, of which five thousand were mine, about
five thousand of bummers, gamblers and prostitutes, and about five
thousands of businessmen, speculators, and capitalists. Then in eighteen sixty
(16:09):
eight he moved to Reno. Literally days after Reno had
been officially established. Was clustered, built up and clustered around
the Central Pacific Railroad, like the local business has supported
mining and agriculture. And he's set up there as a
tailor and he by this time was making tent covers,
horse blankets, and wagon covers. So in December eighteen seventy
(16:32):
January eighteen seventy one, a woman walks into his tailoring
shop and says, my husband, he's a new pair of pants,
but they've all fallen apart. He literally can't even go
out in public. So I'm here to ask you to
make a pair of pants for my husband. So he
sends the wife back to her husband with a string
and says, please measure his waist. So she comes back
and she says, would you please do something to make
(16:52):
these pants.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Not fall apart?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
My husband just goes through these pants like I just
can't believe. So he was working with a fabric called duck.
It's a kind of a Liden canvas. It comes to
the Dutch for canvas and it's pretty sturdy stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
It kind of an off white. And then he had
an over on a table.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
He had some horse blankets and he used to reinforce
the seams and the stress points of horse.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Blankets with rivets, and he looks up at.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
The table and he thinks, huh, I wonder if I
could put some rivets in these pants, if they would
hold together better.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
So he did.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
You're hearing how innovation occurs and by whom in this
great country, and from the oddist circumstances, and often just
trying to solve a problem. Our great business franchise is born.
My goodness, what a story. We're hearing the story of
Levi Strauss. It's being told by Lynn Downeye. More of
this remarkable story, this American story, Levi Strauss's story here
(17:51):
on our American stories, and we continue here with our
American stories and the story of Levi Strauss. Let's return
(18:14):
to our storyteller Lynn Downey.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
He put rivets in the pocket corners, the base of
the button fly held on the little strap in the
back that they had before belt loops, gives them to
the woman. He sees the guy walking around town wearing
his pants, and the guy was really, really happy. And
then people start hearing about these pants of Jacob Davis's,
and they're coming into his shop and asking to buy
some more. So he realizes he's got a big sort
(18:39):
of money making idea in his hands.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
And he was a frustrated.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Inventor, actually a partly successful inventor. He actually had a
patent for a type of clothes press already, and he
really he always thought big and he wanted to mass
manufacture and mass market these pants. So a lot of
the fabric he had in his tailoring shop he got
from Levi straussenk So he knew that name, Levi Strauss.
He knew the reputation of Levi Strauss.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
So what does he do.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
He has this money making idea, he sends examples of
the pants down to Levi Wells Fargo Express and with
the letter that says, here is a big money making idea.
Let's be partners and do this together. Well, you know
that shows a lot of trust, you have to admit.
I mean, what would have prevented Levi from running off
with the idea. But of course he knew Levi's reputation
(19:26):
and he knew he wouldn't do that. He also knew
that even though Levi wasn't a manufacturer, he thought big.
It was a big idea guy, and he would probably
think this was a big idea, And he literally did
and the documents that are in copies of which are
in the National Archives in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
There's this handwritten pencil note note.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
To lawyer, right to this guy, sign him up like now,
I mean literally days after he wrote this letter in
July of eighteen seventy two. So the patent was awarded
after three tries with the Patent Office on May twenty
at eighteen seventy three, for an improvement in fastening pocket openings,
which which is really boring language for basically the invention.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Of the blue jeen. So this is it gets pretty
exciting right off the bat.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
There's a magazine published out of San Francisco called Pacific
Rural Press, very influential with ranchers, farmers, a lot of
people who make farm machinery, whatever, the kind of people
who would wear really tough, riveted pants. And they had
a little article about the pants in one of their issues,
and I want to read you a little bit of it.
(20:29):
So they talk about this invention seems very simple, but
it's really very effective, and we are sure it's going
to become quite popular amongst our working men. Nothing looks
more slouchy in a workman than to see his pockets
ripped open and hanging down, and no other part of
the clothing is so apt to be torn and ripped
as the pockets. Besides its slouchy appearance, it is inconvenient
(20:53):
and often results in the person losing things from his pockets.
All right, seriously, I really don't think the guys were
worried that their pants looks slouchy, you know. But the
point was there would be no more slouchy pockets because
they had rivets. Those pockets had rivets in them. So
the first pants were made of denim, basically denham does
was created first in France, probably in the seventeenth century,
(21:15):
and it was a serge fabric, a type of weave
from the town of Nime, and so it was serge dunim.
And so by the time English textile manufacturers were making it,
they were calling sege denim because even though you have
an English fabric, if you give it a zippy French name,
you know, it's really good marketing. But eventually they anglicized
the word to denim, and then by the eighteenth century
(21:38):
when American textile mill started to make denim, it was
always in English denim, and it was always all cotton,
even though in the very beginning was actually a wool
and silk blend. George Washington toured a Massachusetts textile mill
in seventeen eighty nine and watched Denham being made, so
you know there and there are still people who write
and say that Levi got the denim from France for
his first Genes, and they tended to all those stories.
(22:00):
In France, it was like no firsty. The first Janes
were made of denim, and the Denham came from the
Amazgag Manufacturing Company in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was the
biggest textile mill in the country and they did make
the very best denim in the United States. There were
no denim mills or textile mills in California. Levi I
did have to go all the way to Manchester, New Hampshire.
(22:22):
There was a fabric called Gene j e a n
which was being made at the same time as Denham,
and it tended to be indigo blue, just like Denham was.
It was easily absorbed by the cotton. You know, it
was a color that everybody liked. You know. Whatever pants
made of gene fabric were called Genes. And actually Kentucky
Jeans was a very specific type of pant, and it
(22:45):
originally was made in Kentucky, but again it was one
of those things everybody knew what Kentucky jens were, and
they were made in other places, but not necessarily always
in Kentucky. But it was made of gene fabric. Denham
is one colored thread and one white thread together. Jeane
fabric was two threads of the same color, so it
looked like denim, but it didn't have you know, denim
(23:06):
will have that white that kind of will kind of
the fill will come through a little bit. Geene fabric
was just you know, blue so jeans. Levi Strauss sold
jeans pants and his Draga's inventory before the genes were invented.
Here's why we call them jeans today. So men had
worn unriveted denim pants for a long time and they
(23:27):
were just called, you know, denim overalls. When Levi Strauss
and Jacob Davis put rivets in those for the first time,
it created a new category of workwar which is the
blue gene. But they were called overalls until about the
nineteen fifties, and then teenage boys who saw Marlon Brando
wear five o' one jeans and movies was, you know,
scary motorcycle guy. They wanted to be like him, and
(23:47):
they wanted to wear those pants, but their dads called
them overalls, so they started calling them jeans. They didn't
want to wear overalls like their dad. They had to
be jeans, cool jeans, pants like Marlon Brando did. I
don't even really know why they appropriated that word, but
it was the new word, you know. It was just
a new word for the pants that were already there,
(24:07):
and it was a new modern word for something that
had been around since the eighteen seventies. The changes of
the Jenes went over time and usually were because of
changes in fashion and wanting to modernize, you know, what
the genes were. So the rivets on the back pockets
were always on the outside. But then in the nineteen
twenties and thirties, the company was getting complaints saying, your
(24:28):
ribbts are scratching our saddles and our school decks and
our car hoods, which I don't know about that, and
so what the company did was put the rivets in
the pockets. But then so the pockets over so the
ribbts were there, but then they you know, they wouldn't
scratch but they were eventually taken out completely. And I
think nineteen sixty seven there was a rivet at the
base of the button fly, the indelicately named Karach rivet,
(24:52):
and there was all this anecdotal evidence. You know, people
were writing in, you know, when we crouched in front
of a campfire, this rivet heats up in a really
delicate place, and the company is like, what a bunch
of whimpy cowboys. And then it happened to the president
of the company, mister Walter Hawes. But about that time
(25:15):
it was World War two had started and American clothing
manufacturers had to take a certain amount of metal off
of their clothing. And so I'm sure there was a
meeting at the company's like, Okay, nobody likes this rivet.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
We have to get rid of some rivets. It's going.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
So they had, you know, they had to find a
place to set up shop. The company didn't have didn't
own any manufacturing space until the eighteen eighties, so this
is eighteen seventy three, so they least a space on
Market Street, and they had to advertise for women to
sew the pants.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
And so here's a typical ad.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
This was in the San Francisco Chronicle, I believe in
July of eighteen seventy three wanted fifty first class female
sewing machine operators.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Who can bring their own machines.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
With them, either Singers number two or Grover and Bake
number one for sewing, heavy work, steady and remunerative employment
at four fifteen Market Street, upstairs.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
All right.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I read this and I thought, oh my god, I've
got this image of these poor women, you know, dragging
these machines up Market Street. But they really were very
small and very portable at this time, and it was
actually apparently not that unusual for.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
The women to take them around with them.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
But eventually the company did get some sewing machines so
the women didn't have to bring their own. So Levi
had brought Jacob Davis from Reno to be in charge
of the manufacturing, and Levi stayed with the dry goods.
That's what he knew, that was his business. So Jacob
was in charge. Jacob and his family lived on Folsom Street,
fairly near the to the least and the new factories.
(26:43):
And he became a Levi, Strauss and Company employee.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And you're listening to Lynn Downey and she's the author
of Levi Strauss, the man who gave blue jeans to
the world. And my goodness, what a story of innovation,
of opportunism, and in the end of pure flex and
seeing something new and going for it. When we come
back more of this remarkable story of free enterprise, of
(27:08):
freedom and the country itself, the story of blue jeans.
They were created on this day in history in eighteen
seventy three. Here on our American stories. And we continue
(27:37):
here on how American stories with the story of Levi Strauss,
as told by Lynn Downey. And we're telling this story
because blue jeans were invented on this day in history
in eighteen seventy three. Let's conclude with the final chapter
of this story.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
These pants were called overalls because in the old days,
that's what working pants were called. If you wanted like overalls,
you had to ask for those specifically either engineer overalls,
bib overalls. But if he asked for waste overalls or
just overalls, you got what we today called blue jeans.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
And this was workware. This was pure workware.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
The denim, this nineteenth century denim, was really really tough.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
They wear like iron.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Was an early advertising slogan, and it's very very true.
So among the early consumers were, of course cowboys, and
that stayed as a classic consumer for a very very
long time. Miners of course, and agricultural workers. But there
was one person, one very important person, who never wore
(28:39):
a pair of jeans in his life, and that was
Leavie Strauss. It would be completely inappropriate for him to
wear jeans. He was not a laborer. He was a
wealthy businessman. He was a capitalist. He wore a black
broadcloth suit, a silk tie, and carried a top hat.
So manufacturing is going on, and the company was making
(29:01):
a lot of flyers for the salespeople to give to
potential retail clients, and a lot of them were saying
something called home industry, and this was nineteenth century code
for the fact that they only hired white women and
girls in the factory. And this is one of the
pieces of Levi history that is classic and standard for
San Francisco history that I have the blessing of Bob
(29:22):
Hajj and the entire has family to talk about, because
that's how they told me to write this book, which
is that Levi Strauss did not hire Chinese in his
factory because the discrimination in San Francisco was about the Chinese.
The railroad had been completed in eighteen sixty nine, there
were no more jobs white men. Chinese men were coming
into San Francisco to look for jobs. There was a
lot of hateful rhetoric and violence, and people didn't want
(29:46):
their clothes bade by filthy Chinese who lived in that
strange place called Chinatown and ate strange food, and some
of it ended up on Levi Strauss in company advertising.
This is a priceless that would have gone to a
retail store said manufactured by white labor, and there's quite
a few of those. For a while, it was even
stamped on the inside of the pocket bag of the jeans.
(30:08):
It was a selling point. It was a point of
pride for the company. I don't know how Levi Strauss
personally felt about the Chinese, but as a businessman, he
knew that there was no way that he could sell
his product and keep his business unless he adhere to
the prevailing prejudice.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
We don't like it.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
It's ugly, it's icky, but it's real, and that is
who he was. That's one of the reasons that and
I'll talk about this later. That I find him so
fascinated is because he's not predictable, and he's complicated, and
maybe at times he might might not have been very
easy to like, but that's why he was so interesting
to me. About a year after Levi rot in San Francisco,
(30:49):
he made his first charitable contribution. It was five dollars
to the San Francisco Orphan Asylum Society, which today, by
the way, is the Edgewoch Center for Children and Families
that still as out in the Sun District, still in business.
And that was the beginning of a life long process
of philanthropy that was personally important to him but also
very much.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
A tenant of his Jewish faith.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
We know, it's really easy to track his giving because
a lot of it showed up in the newspapers, and
I can there are personal donations that he made and
corporate donations, and when you see what I evaluated all
where all his money went, you can see what went
most to him personally. A lot of his money went
to take care of young people and to educate young people.
(31:34):
So he's becoming this amazing philanthropist. But the business is,
you know, keeps ongoing, and he and a lot of
his other managers know that when you have a patent
on something, So they had an actual patent on the
process of making riveted clothing.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
You don't get to keep that forever. It's not like
a trademark.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Eventually, inventions have to benefit the public domain. So they
knew in eighteen ninety two that patent was going to
run out and anybody who wanted to, you could start
making revenue clothing. Oh my god, So what the As
we get closer and closer to the eighteen nineties, the
company started basically branding the product in eighteen eighty six,
the famous two horse poll.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
We don't know if it was rever real. We don't know.
People have tried.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
First went on the pants, was put on the patch
on the pants and also used in print, on flyers,
on invoices everywhere, blanketed everything with this logo. And it
was partly branding. But I have a feeling there was
another reason for this. So not everybody in the American
West was literate, and not everybody in the American West
(32:37):
spoke English as their first language.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
And if you go into store and.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
There's some competitors, you know product there and you don't
speak English, or you don't read, you could say, oh,
I want the one with the two horses. You know,
you can point to the picture of the brand that
you want. It was very, very smart marketing and I
think probably fairly common. But that and the product was
called the two Horse brand until nineteen twenty seven, when
(33:02):
the company had to register the name Levi's as a
trademark because Levi's was becoming a generic like Kleenex. But
forever it was the two Horse brand. So in about
eighteen ninety the company started to assign three digit lot
numbers to all of its products. And that's when we
first see it's eighteen ninety or eighteen ninety two, this
famous five.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
Oh one, And here's where we.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Have one of those you know, I need to drink
my dinner at night kind of days when people would
tell me, oh, I know where the number.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Five oh one came from. No, you don't. Nobody knows.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
There was newspaper advertising and funky you know, the Body
Courier and funky newspapers all over the West. Really interesting
visual you know, display ads as well with strong and durable,
you know, great language. And this goes along with other
stories that I found in letters of people had had
(33:53):
written to the company all you know, early of the
century that his employees called him Levi. He wasn't mister
strat even and his customers, you know, called him Levi.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
He did not have this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
You know, this barrier between himself and the men who
wore you know, jeans or or people that were you know,
his customers. He really appeared to be a truly personable
and apparently a guy with a great sense of humor.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Levi never married.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
He moved in with his sister Fanny and her family
when he was in his early forties, and then she
passed away, and then he lived with his oldest nephew,
who was Jacob Stern. And it was Jacob Stern's house
where he was living when he passed away, and that
was the house that went down in nineteen oh six.
He died on September twenty sixth, nineteen oh two. He
was seventy three years old. He had not even really
(34:40):
been ill. He maybe hadn't felt so good for a
couple of days, and went to bed after dinner and
went to sleep and never woke up.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
The funeral was held out of his home.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Jacob Voorsanger, the Rabbi of Temple Emmanuel gave the eulogy.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
They had a special.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Train to go down to Home of Peace and Coolma.
They closed the business for the day so all the
employees could come to the funeral. You know, people always
say nice things about people at your funeral, right, But
I have a feeling that every wonderful thing that was
said about Levi was true, and everything seemed so very
very sincere. And then there were so many obituaries and
articles about him in newspapers after his death that just
(35:15):
seemed to echo everything that the Rabbi had said.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
That makes me really feel that it was very very true.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
So the earthquake and fire happens, the building goes down,
and he had left the business to his four nephews.
He had four nephews and three nieces. In his will,
he left the business, which is the majority of his business,
to the nephews. He left lots of money to orphanages,
mostly orphanages and what were called the Benevolent associations. These
were organizations mostly for the Jewish indigent, widows and orphans,
(35:44):
people who weren't able to take care of themselves. There
was the Eureka Ben Benevolent Society, the first Hebrew Benevolent Society.
He left a lot of money to them, and then
he left each of his nieces twenty five thousand dollars,
not to their husbands to administer for them, but directly
to his nieces, and then the bulk of the business
to his four nephews. His estate, by the way, was
valued at six million dollars and that's six million, nineteen
(36:07):
oh two dollars. So the four nephews didn't have to work.
They were incredibly wealthy. They had real estate. They could
have just skated on their money the rest of their lives,
but they didn't do that. They rebuilt the company. They
rebuilt the building on the very same place. It was
ninety eight Battery. This building is still there. It's at
the corner of Pine and the company was there from
(36:28):
nineteen oh eight until the nineteen seventies when they went
to Inbarcadero Center. So the Stern brothers also kept the
company name. They could have started over. They could have said, oh,
now we're Stern Brothers. No, it was Levi, Strauss and Co.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Again.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
So the family to the family that owns the company
to day is the Hawes family. So Le's. One of
Levi Streuss's nephews was Sigmund Stern. You've all heard of
Sigmund Stern Grove. Well, that was Levi's nephew, Sigmund, and
he and his wife had a daughter named Elise, and
Elise Stern married mister Walter Hawes senior, the gentleman in
this photo, and it's his descendants that own the company today.
(37:09):
His grandson, Bob Hawes, is the man who hired me
for my job as historian, and he is the reason
I call Levi uncle Levi because he is the great
great grand nephew of Levi Strauss himself. And it is
a Hawes family that of course still owns the company now.
Jacob Davis sold his interest in the patent back to
the company about nineteen oh six, and then he died
(37:31):
in nineteen oh eight. His son Simon worked for Levi's
for about twenty years and then he left and started
his own clothing business, which didn't really.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Do very well.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Then in nineteen thirty five he opened another business which
he named after his son, and that is still in
business today, which is Ben Davis the work clothing company
with the little gorilla on the label Ben Davis is
Jacob Davis's grandson, and they're still in business today.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
And you've been listening to Lynn Downey telling the story
of Levi Strauss, her biography, Levi Strauss, the man who
gave blue jeans to the world. The Levi Strauss Story,
an American dreamer story like none we've ever told, as
good as ever we have told here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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