In December 1870, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, by the name of Jacob Davis, was approached by a customer who wanted to purchase work pants for her husband, a woodcutter. The customer informed Davis that her husband’s work required a great deal of bending and stretching, which stressed his pants along the seams. The woodcutter also had the habit of cramming his pockets with the necessary tools of his trade. Davis decided to reinforce the denim material of the pants he crafted, using copper rivets of his own design to strengthen seams and pockets. Like most pants of the day, the fly was closed using buttons, the zipper having not yet been invented.
The copper-riveted button-fly pants proved popular with Reno’s working men, with Davis receiving orders for pair after pair. When a local company approached Davis to create pants for its workers, he approached his supplier of denim and other materials for assistance. That supplier was a San Francisco-based dry goods merchant named Levi Strauss.
Strauss instantly saw the profit potential of mass-producing such durable work pants. He joined Jacob Davis in acquiring a patent, issued by the US Patent Office in May 1873 after multiple failed attempts. The patent was for “Fastening Pocket Opening,” using the aforementioned copper rivets, patent number 139,121. By then, the partners were manufacturing their pants in a San Francisco factory. However, they weren’t really partners. Strauss owned the company, with Davis hired as first a shop supervisor and later as a plant manager. Business was brisk, with miners, loggers, seafarers, railroad workers, farmers, cowhands, and virtually all working men eagerly buying up the new pants made of durable denim and reinforced with rivets. The manufacturers called them waist overalls. The customers called them Levi’s.
Later, in 1873, Davis created the design, which has since appeared on the back pockets of Levi’s jeans, double stitched in orange thread. It was trademarked, registered as US trademark 1,139,254, and remains in use to the present day, among the most recognizable trademarks in the world. For the rest of his life, Davis worked for the company Levi Strauss & Company, overseeing the manufacturing of the work pants he designed and created, as well as other items of clothing, including work shirts, jackets, and overalls. His pants, which could easily have become known as “Jacob’s,” became world famous as “Levi’s,” and Davis died in relative obscurity, though quite wealthy, in 1908. His partner, Levi Strauss, became and remains famous around the globe. Here is his story.
The Salesman
Levi Strauss was born in 1829 in the town of Buttenheim in what was then the Kingdom of Bavaria. He was the youngest of seven children, with three brothers and three sisters. The Strauss family was Jewish, and the children were raised in that faith and tradition. Jews in Bavaria of the day were the target of discrimination, both in daily life among their neighbors and in legal standing. Jewish people were restricted to certain areas, banned from some shops and public areas, and subjected to taxes not levied on those not of Jewish heritage.
Hirsch Strauss, Levi’s father, was a merchant in dry goods. Levi’s mother, Rebecca, was his father’s second wife, who bore him two children to supplement the four he had by his deceased first wife. Hirsch had long hoped to leave Bavaria for the United States, and two of his sons, Jacob and Louis, were planning to immigrate to America in the mid-1840s. They hoped to establish a dry goods business amongst the Jewish population in New York, to be joined by the rest of the family later. The plans were stalled when Hirsch became critically ill in 1845.
In 1846, Hirsch died of tuberculosis. Levi, his mother, and his sisters left Bavaria and journeyed to New York City, arriving in 1847. There, they were met by two of Levi’s older brothers, Jacob and Louis, who had immigrated earlier and who had created a wholesale dry goods distributorship located on Liberty Street in Manhattan. The site was later razed for the construction of the World Trade Center.
At the time, dry goods referred to a diverse list of products, including pots and pans, hardware, cloth goods, leather goods, sewing materials, and others. Young Levi, while still learning English, began working as an itinerant peddler for the business employed by his brother Jacob. Such a peddler was known as a “drummer” at the time. In a later day, he would be called a traveling salesman.
Levi was helped in his work by the growing number of German immigrants in America’s urban communities. Cities such as Milwaukee, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville featured thriving German communities, with newspapers and magazines published in German, beer gardens where businessmen gathered, and fraternal organizations that celebrated their German heritage.
Though his German heritage was helpful in some areas, it proved detrimental in others. 1840s America was a rough and tumble place. Drummers were often greeted with derision, suspicion, or outright hostility in many communities. A heavy German accent was a definite disadvantage when pitching products in a largely non-German area. Local merchants resented the competition, and local manufacturers the same. Levi Strauss was marketing his family’s wholesale products to retailers, who often already had established business relationships with entities willing to literally run competitors out of town. Yet Levi persisted, and his business grew.
By the early 1850s, Levi was settled in Louisville, Kentucky, where he sold his brother’s merchandise to local companies. He also traveled frequently by rail, calling upon customers in Cincinnati, Chicago, and St Louis, as well as points in between. In 1853, Levi became an American citizen. He was well-regarded by the business community in Louisville, though like many, if not most, Americans of the time, he cast his eyes westward, desiring to make a mark of his own rather than as a representative of his brother’s business. California was the irresistible lure.
Going to California
Levi viewed the burgeoning growth of California not as an opportunity to achieve wealth from the gold mines but rather from the miners, as well as the community of laborers arising in support of the mines. In 1853, the Strauss family decided they should open a branch of their business on the West Coast. At the time, there was no railroad across the continent. Shipping goods to and from California meant a lengthy and dangerous sea voyage around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America, a shortened trip which required an excursion across malarial Central America, or a western trek by wagon train across hostile lands. Yet California was booming, having become a state in 1850. Clearly, to the Strauss family, a separate branch in the west was called for.
California then meant San Francisco, with its safe, natural harbor, growing port, and accessibility via steamboat and rail to the mines, logging camps, and emerging farms and orchards. Levi was selected to run the new West Coast branch of J. Strauss and Company, as the firm was called, named for Jacob Strauss, the eldest of the brothers.
Levi selected the cross-Panama option for his journey to the West, arriving in San Francisco in March 1854. He was preceded there by his sister Fanny and her family and took up residence with her. He then set up a new company, Levi Strauss & Company, located at 90 Sacramento Street, and later moved to 62 Sacramento Street, San Francisco. His new concern was both a purveyor of dry goods and a manufacturer of cloth goods, including tents, wagon covers, and work pants. He manufactured all of them from canvas or duck cloth, a type of cotton. Among the items he sold at wholesale was a cloth called denim.
First manufactured in France, denim is a cotton twill with diagonal ribbing, which gives it a durability superior to other cotton weaves. By the mid-19th century, it was already a popular fabric for use in work clothes, aprons, tablecloths, rucksacks, and other materials. Among the workers in San Francisco, it was popular for pants and coveralls, though the durability of finished garments left something to be desired. The quality of the tailoring determined the quality of the garment. Unreinforced seams fell apart, particularly in wet conditions. Pockets, necessary to hold tools, watches, and lunch, separated from the garment with use. Higher quality garments meant higher prices, something many workers could not afford.
As a wholesaler, Levi Strauss was not concerned with such issues. He sold bolt cloth to tailors. Although he did manufacture some goods, including tents, tarpaulins, wagon covers, and work pants, he was primarily focused on wholesale. Nor was denim the only cloth he sold to retailers. His firm sold canvas, cotton duck, woolens, linens, and more. Besides fabrics, Levi Strauss sold kettles, pots and pans, tableware, hardware, glass, and other items demanded by West Coast retailers and ultimately, the steadily increasing populace of California and other emerging Western cities and towns. His company prospered, and Levi’s personal wealth grew. So did his reputation among the political, social, and business leaders of San Francisco.
A Change of Direction
Like Levi Strauss, Jacob Davis was not American-born and like Levi Strauss, Davis was Jewish. He knew the sting of anti-Semitism from his youth in the city of Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire. He was born there in 1831, with the name of Jakobs Jufess. As a youth, he was taught the trade of tailoring. In 1854, he left Riga and the land of the Tsars, arriving in New York City, where he changed his name to Jacob Davis. From there, Davis began a period of wandering about his new country, settling at various times in Maine, California, New York, and other communities, working as an itinerant tailor. He tried his hand at panning gold in California and Canada before setting up a cigar store in Virginia City, in what was then called the Nevada Territory, in 1867. While in Canada, Jacob met and married Anne Parksher, with whom he eventually had six children.
In 1868, the pressures of a growing family led him to settle in Reno, Nevada, then little more than a railroad stop for the Central Pacific Railroad. There, he invested in a brewery, which quickly failed. He then opened a tailor shop and contracted to produce items for the railroad. The Central Pacific was then still under construction as part of the Transcontinental Railroad and provided him with steady work producing tents and wagon covers. Tents exposed to the high winds which frequently plagued the workers in the field required reinforcement at the seams, and Davis devised a way of using rivets to strengthen the seams.
As already related, a request for durable work pants led him to apply his idea of rivet reinforcement to clothing, and eventually created a demand for similar pants he was unable to meet. His 1872 letter to Levi Strauss did not dwell on this problem, but instead discussed the desirability of obtaining a patent for rivet reinforced jeans. The licensing of such a patent to manufacturers would be highly profitable, in his estimation.
Levi Strauss saw it slightly differently. He was predominantly a wholesaler of goods, although he did manufacture cloth products on a limited basis. Levi saw a patent on a product as a means of warding off competition. Manufacturing of the reinforced denim pants would create a product to be distributed wholesale to his already large and still growing customer base. Among them were the catalog companies, emerging department stores including Marshall Fields in Chicago, Gump’s in San Francisco, and many more.
By the time the patent for reinforced pockets was obtained, Levi Strauss & Company operated a large tailor shop in San Francisco. Under the agreement between Levi and Jacob, the latter left Reno and moved to San Francisco, where he oversaw operation of the shop. Demand grew steadily. Thanks to Jacob, Levi’s jeans were instantly recognizable due to the distinctive logo stitched on the back pockets. Retailers displayed the jeans where the logo was readily seen by customers.
The jeans were similar in many ways to the modern Levi’s 501 jeans, though they did not bear that designation yet. They featured the riveted front pockets, the watch pocket in the right front, suspender buttons, since most men wore suspenders at the time, the stitched logo on the single back pocket, and the five button fly. Yet, Levi’s did not designate the garment as jeans, nor even as pants. Levi Strauss marketed the item as “waist overalls”. In their early advertising, the garment was described as being intended to be worn over pants, as protection, though they fastened at the waist rather than over the shoulder as bib overalls do.
By the 1880s, Levi Strauss & Company was no longer a wholesaler of denim, nor any other cloth. Instead, it was a consumer of denim. Gradually all other lines of the wholesale business were dropped, and Levi’s became a leading manufacturer of finished pants, made in a San Francisco plant managed by Jacob Davis. Levi’s eventually became synonymous with “jeans”. In 1890, Levi Strauss designated the original design by a lot number: 501. Today’s Levi’s 501 jeans are more or less the same as they were then, though with two back pockets and belt loops rather than suspender buttons, and the company makes many alternative styles of jeans to complement the original product.
The Innovative Businessman
In the 1880s, Levi’s manufactured one product, their self-named waist overalls. In San Francisco and the American West, they needed little advertising. Word of mouth sufficed, and the railroads carried the news of the durable pants eastward even as San Francisco-based ships carried it to ports around the world. That wasn’t enough for Levi Strauss. The former drummer hired drummers of his own, trained them in sales techniques, equipped them with samples, and dispatched them to meet with wholesalers and retailers across the globe.
Today most, if not all, jeans are marketed chiefly with an eye toward fashion, fit, and style. Not so in the late 19th century. Levi’s drummers and supporting advertising presented the product as durable work pants. They were designed and manufactured for men who needed sturdy, long-lasting pants for work. Levi’s representatives presented them as suitable attire for the factory floor, the mine shaft, the logging camp, the farm, the ranch, piers, warehouses, loading docks, construction sites, and wherever men labored outside of an office or store. They were unabashedly aimed at what would in a later day be called blue collar jobs.
In this, they had an advantage in the use of denim, which had always been linked to workers clothes. Originally called serge de Nimes, after the region of France where it was first made, denim was a fabric chosen for work clothes from the 17th century onwards in Europe. The word “jeans,” to describe work pants, is even older, and is believed to have derived from the word Genoese, referring to material similar to modern denim used to make work pants for Italian sailors in the 16th century.
Levi Strauss did not stray from the working man’s market in his lifetime. His innovations were in the area of marketing, placing his product firmly in the list of needs for the working man, along with tools, gloves, and a lunch bucket. No trace of glamor was linked to Levi’s during his lifetime. Indeed, Levi Strauss & Company did not launch a product aimed at women, Lady’s Levi’s, until 1934.
Fit was not a particular concern of Levi Strauss either. As long as the pants fit at the waist, more or less, they were acceptable. Too short? Tuck the cuffs into work boots. Too long? Roll up the cuffs. The latter became a fashion trend among teens in the 1940s, when Levi’s jeans became a part of daily wear, rather than simple work pants.
In 1886, Levi Strauss & Company introduced a new trademark. It consisted of two horses tethered to a pair of Levi’s waist overalls, with drovers urging the horses to tear the pants apart. The trademark remains in use to the present day.
The Community Leader
Besides his activities with Levi Strauss & Company, Levi served on several boards and other business activities. When San Francisco created its Board of Trade in 1877, he became its first treasurer. He served as a director of the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company; the Liverpool, London and Globe Insurance Company; and the Bank of Nevada. In 1897, he created the Levi Strauss Foundation with an endowment for the University of California, Berkeley which funded, and continues to fund, 28 separate scholarships at that institution.
Levi Strauss was a member of the Reform Branch of Judaism from childhood. When he arrived in San Francisco, the city was still a rough and ready boom town, with the civilizing influences of places of worship and schools still largely overlooked. As one of the city’s leading businessmen, Strauss took an interest in improving his adopted hometown. He was one of the leaders of Congregation Emanu-El in joining the Reform Movement in the 1870s and supported the synagogue for the rest of his life.
In the late 1880s, Levi Strauss unofficially retired from the business he started. Yet he remained in San Francisco, active in community affairs and retained contacts with customers and suppliers. He concentrated his time and fortune in philanthropic activities, supporting the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home, the Hebrew Board of Relief, and other similar activities. He joined with other prominent San Francisco businessmen in attempting to reform the city’s reputation of a less than civilized boomtown, creating an aura of civility and refinement. It was not altogether successful.
That San Francisco remained a rough town is evident in an incident affecting Levi Strauss in 1885. In March, 1885 a former merchant from Calaveras County named Antonio Gagliardo threatened Strauss by letter, telling the businessman that unless he helped Gagliardo obtain a job within ten days, he would “blow his head off”. It seems Gagliardo had previously written Strauss seeking a clerkship in Los Angeles, asking for Levi’s help by asserting his influence. Unwilling to do so, Strauss instead sent the disgruntled man $50 to help, equivalent to more than $1200 in today’s money. Evidently, Gagliardo found such largesse offensive or at least insulting.
When Strauss learned that Gagliardo had returned to San Francisco he had the police informed of the threat and the potential assailant’s whereabouts. Yet when the police arrested Gagliardo, Strauss refused to press charges. Instead, he met with Gagliardo and extracted from the would-be miscreant a promise to “…refrain from carrying his sanguinary promises into execution.”
Not all his personal correspondence was so alarming. Strauss maintained correspondence with friends, customers, community leaders, religious leaders, and fellow manufacturers throughout most of his life. He also communicated with family through the mail, leaving a lengthy record of correspondence.
In 1890, Levi Strauss & Company was officially incorporated, with the bulk of the stock held by Levi and his four nephews.
Levi Strauss never married. He had no children of his own. When he died, on September 26, 1902, he left an estate valued at about $6 million, about $219 million today, the bulk of which went to four nephews, with lesser amounts to other family members and to various local institutions and charities. Jacob Davis, with whom Levi shared the patent for the original riveted waist overalls, died in 1908. Following his death his son, Simon Davis, took over management of the Levi’s plant in San Francisco.
Legacy
In the 1930s, jeans appeared regularly in films, often Westerns, as well as on characters portraying working men. In turn, Western films helped popularize dude ranches in the West. Jeans for women appeared in the 1930s. Jeans proved popular for women, by the 1940s they were worn when gardening, doing housework, and when women assumed the role of Rosie the Riveter, jeans were part of her garb. In the 1950s, jeans, coupled with a leather jacket, or at least a jacket with a turned-up collar, became a uniform of teenage rebellion, popularized by Marlon Brando, James Dean, Sal Mineo, and others.
When Levi’s introduced their first Lady’s Levi’s during the Dude Ranch craze in 1934, they produced them not only with a button fly, but with the fly in the front, raising eyebrows and prim responses from many. At the time it was common for women’s pants, which were relatively rare, to have the fly on the side. A button fly in the front was considered risqué in the extreme.
Over time Levi Strauss & Company expanded and contracted with fluctuating business cycles, world wars, changing public tastes, and other variables that affect all businesses. It has introduced several additional styles, additional brands, expanded clothing lines, and other products. In 2019, it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker designation LEVI and a valuation of $6.6 billion. In 2023, the company announced it would begin to accept old jeans for recycling into new denim material.
One should be careful before discarding such old Levi jeans. In 2022, a pair of 1880s vintage Levi’s found in an abandoned mine were sold at auction in New Mexico for over $87,000. According to a report on CNN, the jeans were wearable, size 38 waist, 32 length. In 1880, the jeans would have cost about $1.25, more or less, or $38.50 today. So, they were considerably less expensive than their modern counterparts.
Levi Strauss is frequently cited as the inventor of blue jeans, themselves a quintessential American product. Yet it required a fabric invented in Renaissance France, a Jewish tailor and inventor from Tsarist Latvia, and another Jewish wholesaler of dry goods from Bavaria to create what became known as jeans, which were largely manufactured in the early days by immigrant laborers in Levi Strauss & Company’s San Francisco factories. What could be more American than that?
Today the company founded by Levi Strauss still manufactures riveted 501 jeans, as well as scores of other products, as a global manufacturing goliath. Its headquarters are still in San Francisco, where its founder intended, but it no longer manufactures its products in the United States. Times change, even while some styles seem timeless.
