This 2018 episode covers Levi Strauss, whose life story touches on a lot of important moments in U.S. history. His business was tied to the California Gold Rush, the U.S. Civil War and American clothing culture.
Happy Saturday. The US Patent Office granted a patent to Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss one hundred and fifty years ago today. That was the patent for Improvements in Fastening Pocket Openings, which is generally recognized as the patent for the first blue jeans. We covered Levi Strauss and the development of blue jeans, along with other parts of his life and career in our August eighth, twenty eighteen episode, and that is today's Saturday Classic Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And today's episode was requested approximately one hundred years ago, if you go by way of hyperbole by our listener other not really one hundred years ago, but it feels that way. It was a very long time, and I have had it on my list throughout that time, but I am only just now getting to it. For a variety of reasons. We are talking today about Levi Strauss, and his story is really historically interesting because it touches on a lot of important moments in US history. So he was an immigrant who ended up in a business that was impacted by and in turn affected the US Civil War and American clothing culture. He has a story that's tied to the Gold Rush. He also had a vision for his adopted city of San Francisco that he worked really hard to achieve so that future generations would benefit from it, and his life, in many ways is the story of the United States in the nineteenth century from the perspective of a Jewish immigrant who became a captain of industry. Before we get into his story, I will make a confession, which is that until fairly recently, probably five years is Shigo, I thought Levi and Strauss were two different people that had been in business together. That's all I'm saying. So clearly I missed this in history class because even though people wear Levi's and you'd call it Levi Strauss, I didn't realize that was one person's proper name. So I grew up in North Carolina, not all that far away from Cone Mills, which is who made the denim for Levi's five oh ones for two hundred years or something, So like this is a piece of history that is like I'm a little more steeped in I didn't have confusion about whether Levi and Strauss are two people. It's not my proudest moment. But in my defense, even though I am a clothes person, I don't think I owned a pair of jeans of any flavor from about nineteen eighty five until like two years ago. Like that's just never been my things. So's that's my excuse paltry. Though it may be that I just never examined Levi Strauss. If it makes you feel better, I thought Hannah Barbara was one person. It was a woman. Oh no, that'd be funny, but no. So. Levi was born Lueb Strauss on February twenty, sixth of eighteen twenty nine in Budenheim, Germany. His father, Hirsch Strauss, was a salesman who sold household goods store to door. His mother's name was Rebecca has Strauss, and both she and Hirsch grew up in Franconia. It's an area in the north of modern day Bavaria, which was predominantly Jewish. Rebecca was Hirsch's second wife. His first wife, matel Baumann Strauss, had died at the age of thirty five, leaving him with five children. Then Hirsh and Rebecca had two more children together, a daughter, and then Lub and Hirsh. Rebecca and their seven children lived in a three room downstairs floor of a two story house. So this was a time when Bavaria's Udenadict or Jew law was in effect that had started in the eighteen teens. In this law seemed as though it offered Jewish citizens the opportunity to pursue a number of jobs that had once been forbidden to them, but in return, it also created really strict regulations for their lives. Among them, marriage and immigration of new Jews was severely limited. All Jews had to be registered, they had to take German names, they could not own land, and even their language was codified so all public records had to be kept in German. They could not use Hebrew for those someone like Hirsch Strauss, who traveled through the area selling his wares, also served as messengers and as community connectors during this time, and in this profession Kirsch was sort of exempted from a part of the Udon edict. Working as a peddler, which had been a traditional job for Jewish men in the area for a long time, was no longer considered an acceptable career, but older people like Hirsh who weren't able to pick up a new profession were allowed to keep doing it. Yeah, it was expected that they would just eventually die off, and so would that profession, and all of the limitations of the Uden edict eventually inspired emigration. One of the marriage laws that really created a problem was that only the eldest son of any Jewish household could get married, and so there were some workarounds like if another son that was younger wanted to marry a widow, that was acceptable, or if a couple that had no children wanted to give up the slot, their eldest son would have had to another family so they could have two sons Mary they could, but basically this really limited the entire societal culture because all of these young women could not get married, all of these young men could not get married. It was frustrating. So eventually they wanted to leave, and in eighteen thirty seven there was a group of eighteen people that left. Eighteen young people and two of Lub's older siblings were part of that. They left Germany to make homes in London and New York. In nineteen forty and nineteen forty one. Two more of the Strass children followed suit. In eighteen forty six, Hirsh died of tuberculosis. Rebecca remarried soon after to Hersh's brother, who was a widower named Lippmann, but Lippmann died just a few weeks after the wedding. Loub was seventeen at that time and two of his sisters were still living at home, and emigration at this point was not easy. You couldn't just pick up and leave. The Bavarian government had to approve anyone who wished to leave the country, and you had to prove that neither you nor anyone in your family had any sort of criminal record, and that you could afford to make the trip. On March seventeenth, eighteen forty seven, Rebecca Strauss filed an emigration petition in which she stated that because she was a widow, she didn't have the financial support anymore. She didn't know how she would provide for her youngest son, but she had children in the United States who could help her get settled there. Lib was old enough to work and contribute to the family's finances once they arrived, and for his part, Loub wrote his own petition, stating quote, no members of my family will stay behind. I will share the faith that has been assigned to me with them in foreign lands. I thus joined my mother in her place Poe. On June twenty sixth, eighteen forty seven, Rebecca and her children, so Lub and his two sisters were approved for immigration, but they didn't leave immediately because Rebecca needed to make sure that the family that had gone on to New York had indeed made preparations for the three of them to arrive and live there. They finally made their way in the spring of eighteen forty eight, although the specifics of their transatlantic passage aren't really documented or known. Jonas and Louis Strauss, Libb's brothers, had both become dry goods merchants in the city. They'd opened up a shop at three ninety three and a half Grand Street, but by the time the family arrived, they had moved to a more lucrative location at two three and a half Division Street. They lived above the shop. Jonas had also gotten married and started his own family, and at some point Lub followed the example that his siblings had, and he changed his name to a more americanized version. This was not uncommon, and in the eighteen fifty census he is listed as Levi with a Y. He also started working in the family dry goods business. While he was there, he learned English really quickly so that he could speak with business partners and customers, and he applied for US citizenship, just as his brothers had done before him. The Strauss's dry goods business was doing really well. They moved to another new location near Union Market in eighteen fifty one, and as their family business was growing, a new opportunity was making itself a parent across the country, as the California Gold Rush fostered new towns, new prosperity, and a need for dry goods. The Strauss brothers did not want to miss a chance to capitalize on this new market, but they also needed to keep their established New York business going, and so the youngest brother of the family was sent west. Five days after he took his oath of citizenship. On January thirty first, eighteen fifty three, Loeb Strauss, who was now going by Levi, left New York for San Francisco aboard the US mailship Georgia, which was a steamer, and the family had already loaded a shipment of merchandise aboard another ship called the Winged Racer for Levi to take possession of once he reached San Francisco. The clipper Winged Racer was sailing down around the tip of South America and then north to California. Levi would make the trip in less time, traveling through Panama. This was, of course, before the Panama Canal was built, so he took the steamer Georgia to Panama and then traveled across that thin strip of the country to Panama City on the Pacific side. They got on another steamer there called the Isthmus and that was bound for San Francisco. He arrived in San Francisco on March thirteenth, eighteen fifty three. This was considered for a lot of people a safer plan than trying to travel overland from New York to San Francisco, because people often did not survive that journey, or if they did get to California, they got there in pretty sorry shape. This was a little bit of an easier move, and the specifics of Levi's first days in San Francisco are also unknown. He would have needed to rent warehouse space for the goods that were coming in on the winged racer, and he would have needed to find lodgings for himself. He most likely had some letters of introduction to family connections that had already made that journey west, so it wasn't as though he just showed up and had to figure everything out by himself. He had some security net in place that merchandise that had been shipped showed up two weeks after leap I did on March thirtieth. Unlike other merchants who had some bid on merchandise that was shipped on Speck, once it got to the port at San Francisco, Levi knew what was coming. He just had to inspect it, accept it, and then move it into the warehouse. As he got to know the market in California, he could ensure that future shipments contained items that would be the most likely to move and to make the most money. And for clarity, the Strausses were not opening a retail shop in San Francisco, even though they had sort of a similar one in New York. They were basically setting up a wholesale business that would sell stock to other merchants for their shops. So Levi had to invest time in developing really good relationships with other businessmen in the area, and he was twenty four at this point. He wasn't supporting a wife or family, so aside from attending synagogue and participating in social events primarily within San Francisco's Jewish community, all of his efforts could be focused on establishing the family's new West Coast firm. And he wasn't only working with retailers in San Francisco either. He also traveled inland to Sacramento, and he paid visits to smaller mining towns to make deals with the shopkeepers there. And this was an ongoing practice for the business that he pretty much carried out forever. So when news broke of new or strikes or a new town popping up, Strauss was smart enough to go get into those towns that sprouted up in those places really quickly and forge those new business partnerships. Coming up, we'll talk more about how Levi Strauss set up the Strauss family business in San Francisco, but first we will take a little break for a word from a sponsor. So Levi quickly established a list of regular clientele and even as he had received shipment of that first load of freight that his brothers had sent. There were already two other shipments on the way. He was doing business ostensibly for the company that his brother founded, which was Jay straussan brother, but he was invoicing clients sort of as a separate business as just Levi Strauss. In July eighteen fifty five, Levi sent a shipment of gold back to his brothers. This was valued at a little over ten thousand dollars at the time, which is estimated to be close to a quarter of a million dollars in modern currency. Of course, it's really difficult to make those estimates. Clearly, the California office was doing really well. In spite of the fact that there was something a financial panic going on in San Francisco that year, it didn't seem to impact Strauss. By the end of eighteen fifty five, he'd sent more than eighty two thousand dollars home in gold. Yeah, one of the things that really made his business. It'll come up over and over that even when they are difficulties, they still managed to pull through and even do pretty well. Like people will always need dry goods, they always need clothes, and linens and household basics, so it was a really smart business to be in the first place. In eighteen fifty six saw continued expansion of the Strauss enterprise in California. Levi's sister, Fogela, who had changed her name to Fanny when she moved to the United States, moved to San Francisco with her husband, David Stearns, and their children to assist with the growing responsibilities of the business, and his brother Lewis also joined them. It is possible, though unconfirmed, that his mother, Rebecca, made the journey as well, and for the first time since moving to the US, Levi actually had a home with an address that was separate from his business, not living above it or within it, indicating that there was this ongoing trend of prosperity. The firm also changed names that year from Jay Strauss and Brother to Jay Strauss, Brother and Company, maybe to acknowledge Levi's contribution, but on all records in California it was listed as Levi Strauss. Levi sent more than double the amount to New York in eighteen fifty six that he had in eighteen fifty five. That amounted to approximately two hundred thousand dollars. Eventually, in the late eighteen sixties, Levi changed the name of the California branch to Levi Strauss and Company, recognizing his family member's contributions. Eighteen fifty six was also the year that Levi Strauss became involved, along with his brother in law, in the Committee of Vigilance, which was a vigilante group made up largely of merchants that formed a combat the city's growing political corruption and related violence. While business and politics had largely stayed separate up to that point, concerns over how businesses could be impacted by the lawlessness of men in power led to the Committee of Vigilance nominating and eventually electing many of the city the business leaders into political office. So they picked people that they knew from other merchants and put them in office because they thought that was safer. And while Strauss did not seem to have any political ambitions of his own, he did back the political efforts of the Committee. Those committees, there were several of them and several places at this time period, and in some places their activities were kind of controversial because there was like an extra judicial violence capacity in this combat of corruption. So it's like there's a whole bigger story there. But his involvement was really about electing businessmen to city positions, and there had actually been a similar committee in San Francisco several years prior to this that was much more of like a vigilanti law force that thought that they would fill the gap between the crime that was going on and the police that were obviously to their minds, not doing anything about it. So that existed in San Francisco as well, although he was not part of that at the time. In eighteen fifty seven, the Strauss family experienced a financial loss. In September, the SS Central America, which had picked up passengers and freight in Panama, including a large shipment of gold, went down in a hurricane off the US coast in the Atlantic. More than four hundred people died and an estimated one point five million dollars of gold was lost, including seventy six thousand dollars that was en route to J. Strauss brother and Company from Levi Strauss and Company. Incidentally, the wreckage of the Central America was found and much of the treasure recovered in nineteen eighty eight, although there was a significant legal battle over who should get that gold. The sinking of the Central America set off a financial panic. There was a lot of gold that New York banks had been expecting on that ship, so when it didn't show up that was it was a significant economic disruption. And yet, as seems to be the pattern of his life, Levi Strauss weathered this storm. Part of this was because his brothers were the ones shipping him goods, so that meant he didn't have to reassure a supplier of his good credit and be like, no, no, I know, I lost some money, but I will make it up to you. They were like, yeah, we'll just keep it going. So the Strauss family continued business as usual, and because other entrepreneurs didn't have the credit or the leverage to do the same thing, Levi's business flourished as others shut down. By the end of the year, he was shipping gold to New York once again, and he had expanded to have offices in the city that were actually separate from his warehouse. He was also taking shipments of raw materials from suppliers outside the family, which he then leveraged in deals that got him discounts on the goods that were made from those raw materials. As the country found itself in the grip of the Civil War, San Francisco's citizens realized they could eventually be impacted by it. California had entered the Union as a free state, as outlined in the Compromise of eighteen fifty, but while most of the city was loyal to the Union, there were some concerns about some government officials wanting to ally with the Confederacy. After a pro Union rally in the city on May eleventh, eighteen sixty one, at the junction of Montgomery Market and Post Streets, a resolution was put forth that formed a Union Committee of thirty four. This is a committee of respected men who would uphold the ideals of the Union, fill vacant government posts, and keep an eye out for treason. Levi Strauss is one of the men named as a member of this group, and one of only three Jewish men included. Yeah, they were very worried that there were people that were infiltrating California who were pro slavery, and that it was going to completely cause an upheaval of everything going on in the state, and particularly in a large city like San Francisco. So they really wanted to try to keep an eye out and prevent such a problem, and when the troops that were stationed at the Presidio were sent east to fight, it really left the people of San Francisco a little bit uneasy and they were fearful without protection. An a volunteer group known as the Home Guard was founded that consisted of three thousand men, and it sort of served as a makeshift military force. The Home Guard and the Union Committee of thirty four actually disbanded though, when Leland Stanford was elected California governor. Stanford was a pro Union Republican who was very well respected, successful, and powerful, so the concerns of some sort of pro Confederacy uprising that had led to the formation of those two groups were pretty diminished under his leadership. Strauss and his California business continued to do well through all of this, and the prosperity of California's merchants helped keep the country afloat through the Civil War. Strauss had recognized the value of real estate fairly early on and had invested in a number of properties throughout the city, which he often sold as a prophet after holding them for some time. Levi Strauss and Company also moved into a new space that he purchased in eighteen sixty seven, so was a four story building on Battery Stree that clearly showed the company's success. The company was known for its excellent and speedy service and the ability of its employees to satisfy client needs with even the largest orders. Yeah, there was a write up where they actually used the word empowered to describe the salespeople and clerks at Levi Strauss as being able, like they were empowered to meet the needs and agree to deals with clients, which is sort of a weird word to be using in the eighteen sixties, but there it was. Unfortunately, the late eighteen sixties also came with family loss, as Levi's half sister Mary died in eighteen sixty six and his mother, Rebecca passed three years later. After Rebecca's death, Levi traveled back to New York and he stayed there for a month, presumably to help settle accounts and get her affairs in order. There was also an embezzlement scandal at Levi, Strauss and Company in October of eighteen sixty six, when news broke that a bookkeeper had taken five hundred thousand dollars and left the country. While the company, not wanting to scare away business partners, said that there was no money missing, it also made a statement in an advertisement that the man in question, G. S. Goodman, was no longer with the company it was not authorized to conduct business on behalf of Levi Strauss and Company. This mix of messages seemed to blow over. While mister Goodman never saw any retribution of the fact that he had taken money from his employer, quite a lot of money from his employer, neither the company nor Levi Strauss personally seemed to suffer any negative fallout from it. Either. Yeah, that's one of those stories where it's like they completely claimed that it had not happened, so there is no record of it happening. But then the fact that they're also like, but also if you talk to that guy, he doesn't work for us anymore. You know, it does seem like it's a little bit of a weird combination of things to put out in the press. The company continued explosive growth right into the eighteen seventies, as Levi, who obviously had an impressive business instinct, realized that he needed to expand into international markets. At that point, his business had expanded to supply merchants all along the Western Seaboard and into Oregon and Montana, but he was also expanding farther into the American Southwest, and then he started to reach out to potential clients in Canada, Mexico, and Hawaii. Coming up, we're going to dive into the thing that the Levi Strauss name is most closely associated with today, which is blue jeans. First, we're going to have a quick sponsor break. Jacob Davis, who presumably started out his yakub and americanized his name when he got here, was also a Jewish immigrant, and he had moved to the United States from Russia as a young man. He, like Levi, also worked in dry goods as a cutter and a tailor, although he had also dabbled in the brewery business and some other enterprises. He was also an inventor. He had developed a screw based clothing fastener, an ironing board that could also stretch clothes, and a folding press, and those last two items were granted patents, but that fastener was not. Jacob had also expanded his tailoring work to make tents and wagon covers. To capitalize on a need for those kinds of goods and mining towns in Nevada, where he lived, he started making very sturdy, long lasting trousers for laborers out of duck and denim. Duck is like a very densely woven cloth, and he eventually, on the sixth suggestion of a relative, started buying his duck yardage from Levi Straussing Company. Yeah, duck is usually compared to like a very densely woven canvas. Almost. It's one of those things that people still make work clothes out of. Sometimes I don't love it. It's a little stiff for my taste. It's very sturdy. It will last you a long time. And to please one of his hailering customers who came in to order work pants for her husband, who apparently wore through them at a pretty good clip, Davis used rivets to reinforce the pockets. The story goes that the wife came in because she said, my husband has worn out all his pants and cannot leave the house. I have to come at place's order. So she had to go back with a piece of string and mark like his waistline and other measurements and then bring it back to the shop and she was delighted. It appeared her husband was delighted. Jacob later saw her husband around town wearing these pants, so it seemed like everything was going great. And he included that detail those riveted pockets on a number of other pairs of pants because people started to see these pants in town and asked where they came from and could they also get the same ones, And so he started making these pants with duck canvas and riveted pockets for more and more people. As the riveted pants pocket became popular with his customers, Davis decided he should patent them, but that was a really expensive process, and the story goes that his wife didn't want him to spend money that they didn't have trying to do it. So along with a payment on an invoice that he sent to Levi strauss In company, he also sent two pairs of pants with the proposition that the company apply for the patent in his name and in return, he would give the company half the rights to sell the pants. This is like the most trusting move I can possibly imagine someone doing. I know, here's this thing I invented. I would like you to help me patent. By the way, it's not patented yet, but here it is. Yeah, especially having been working on this day in history class and recently recording episodes on people like Filo Farnsworth and Nikola Tesla, Like there are so many stories about a big business that's like, I'm gonna take this patent from you for no money and exploit it. Yay. In a lecture that I was watching online of a Levi Strauss biographer whose book I used for a lot of this, she was saying, like, to her, this really indicates how trustworthy Levi Straus was perceived to be by people that just knew his name, Like he just had this reputation for being a really honest and good man, and so this person completely trusted him with his invention. And there it went, and Strauss was no fool. He went for the idea really quickly. He wrote up an agreement that gave the company Levi Strauss and Company exclusive rights to sell the pants on the West coast, and that quote rights outside of the Pacific Coast and territory shall be equally divided between ourselves and Davis. Davis agreed to these terms and made it very clear that this was not just about the rivets, it was also about the cut and construction. He offered to oversee the manufacture of the pants, either in New York or in San Francisco, whichever Strauss preferred, and the first patent application filed on behalf of Davis, was rejected on the basis that the military had been using rivets in the construction of shoes already, and so that just using them on pockets was really not an innovation. Strauss did not accept this. He hired lawyers who specialized in patent law to appeal the case, but it was once again rejected. In early eighteen seventy three, Strauss and Davis were preparing another go at a patent for these riveted pants. Davis and his family moved to San Francisco in May. A revised version of their application was submitted, this time with more detail about the distinction between the riveting that they were using on clothes and the way that rivets had been used on shoes. Just a few weeks later, on May twenty at of eighteen seventy three, the patent was issued. Strauss paid Davis for the value of his home and store in Reno Nevada, and the Davises made their move to San Francisco permanent so that Jacob could oversee production of this new line of riveted trousers. Strauss later sold this back to Davis for a dollar and he flipped it. Yeah, it was a couple of years later that Davis bought back his house and shop in Reno, and I think it was only like three months after that that he sold it. And at the time, they marketed these new pants as overalls, and that word did not have the connotation of bib overalls that it would have today. They were sometimes called waste overalls, like basically part of that was because you could wear them over other pants, but people wore them without pants underneath it as well. The first batches went out in June of eighteen seventy three, so that was just a month after the patent was approved. At nineteen fifty per dozen pairs, so nineteen dollars and fifty cents for a dozen of them. This was a substantial increase over previous market prices for similar garments, more than a dollar more than individual purchasers were used to seeing. So for a merchant that was the middleman to have to pay that much per pant was significant. They really had to explain, No, these are going to last you so long. They are way stronger and better than other pants. Strauss opened up a new factory location so they could start more serious production. The following month, they placed an ad for first class female sewing machine operators. These operators had to bring their own sewing machines that were suitable for heavy work. Yeah he Even in the advertisement they laid out which sewing machine models would be acceptable and if you didn't have one of those, don't apply for the job. Soon Levi Straussing Company also started selling riveted duck coats for hunting, and by the end of eighteen seventy three they had sold an estimated twenty thousand garments. The pants that they were making at the beginning bore pretty much all the characteristics we see on Levi's today, although they have shifted in style a little bit, so they had copper rivets, they had that mustard orange thread for stitching, and the curvy, shallow V stitching on the back pocket. The year after Levi and Jacob's riveted overalls hit the market, Levi was named by The New York Times as one of San Francisco's millionaires. He had also set up the company, which was basically functioning on its own, a separate entity from Jay Strauss's brother and company. It's a co partnership with his brothers so that they would have power of attorney and be able to make decisions about the business in the event that he was not able to. Yeah, he kind of realized this has grown massive, and I can't be the only one who makes decisions if something goes awry. And that same year, Levi Strauss also sued a competitor who started using rivets in the construction of their pants. That other manufacturer, ab lfeldt In Company, pulled all the product that they had made from shelves once that suit was filed, but Strauss continued the legal action anyway in order to deter others from infringing on the patent. Just a couple of years later, Levi Strauss and his brothers set up an East Coast factory under Jacob Davis's supervision to make riveted goods, But in late eighteen seventy six, another manufacturer, HW King and Company started making riveted goods as well. Levi Strauss saw his company's numbers drop, even as they brought an infringement suit against this other company. After a four year legal battle, the case was decided in favor of Levi Strauss and Company. Yeah, that's a long time for that to drag out, but they were like, nope, we're going to do it eventually. They did start as their patents did not last forever, and they started realizing that they had to do branding so that their genes were completely recognizable from others and people could ask for them by look. That's how they developed their logo. They kind of knew they couldn't stave off other people using rivets forever, so they've got very savvy about how they presented their clothes. There were also two more deaths in the Strauss family in eighteen seventy four. Levi's brother in law and senior partner, David Stern, died in January and in August. One of David's sons, who was just eighteen, died for reasons that have been lost to the historical record. And even as there were losses, the family also continued to grow through marriage and children, and it reached a point where fourteen people were all living in Strauss's including himself, so they moved to a larger home on Leavenworth Street. In the eighteen seventies, Chinese immigrants in California were being viewed with increasing hostility as they competed for jobs with white laborers in the same market with fewer and fewer opportunities. In eighteen seventy six, Strauss was named in an expose that appeared in the Daily Morning Call. The claim was that Strauss was employing five hundred Chinese workers. A rebuttal appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle the following day, saying that the company employed exactly one Chinese person and that that person was in a position that white laborers had quote again and again tried and failed to do. That position was cutting the dense fabrics that were used to make these overalls. Generally, Levi Strauss and Company, like a lot of manufacturers at the time, really stressed in their advertising that their goods were made by white labor. Yeah, this was a whole problematic thing. To talk about it a little more in a moment, But we have talked before also on the show about the racism that became rampant, particularly on the West coast of the United States during this time towards Asian immigrants, and he continued to do business with Chinese merchants. He did not seem to have an aversion to them at all or be racist towards them in terms of business partnerships. But he kind of knew that if he was like, yes, I hired Chinese labors, that it would tank the company because people would not trust him anymore. So he was complicit in this whole system. But that doesn't seem to reflect like a personal outward racism, right, I know. And in eighteen eighty he worked on the committee that arranged the San Francisco visit of President Rutherford B. Hayes. This was kind of funny because it was reported that mister and missus Levi Strauss attended a dinner in the President's honor, But Levi never got married, so it is unclear if he had taken a female relative to this event or an acquaintance, or if the paper simply got the facts wrong. In January of eighteen eighty one, the San Francisco Bulletin published the details of Levi Strauss's funeral. There's one problem, he was very much alive at this point. Initially, this sounds like a really funny mix up, but it was actually a really sad moment. Levi's brother Lewis had been the one who had died, and the paper had to publish a correction the next day. Three years later, the Strauss's sister, Fanny, who had been very close to Levi, also died, and the oldest sibling and founder of the family business, Jonah Strauss, died in eighteen eighty five. Like Levi, his siblings had also been really involved in philanthropic work. Yeah, we're going to talk about his philanthropy in just a moment, but all of their obituaries talk about all of the places that they donated both money and time, all of the causes they supported. It definitely was a family affair in terms of like wanting a better community and a better future for the children that would come after. Another devastating loss came in eighteen ninety three when Levi's nephew Nathan, who had been running the New York offices for the firm, shot himself in his office bathroom, and while it eventually came out that he had lost a good bit of money, it was never discovered exactly how that had happened. There were certainly lots of rumors about how it might have happened, but there is no clear evidence as to actually what had led him to that moment. In nineteen hundred, Levi Strauss and Company printed its first catalog. The business seemed to have no limit to its potential. At this point. He weathered a labor strike that took place throughout the city that year. In nineteen oh two, he also joined with other community leaders to speak out against making the provisions of the eighteen ninety two Geary Act permanent. The Geary Act had extended the provisions of the eighteen eighty two Chinese Exclusion Act, and we've talked about the Chinese Exclusion Act on the show. Before the telegram that was sent by Strauss and his colleagues to Washington, d C. Stated that barring legitimate Chinese merchants was an injustice. This plea did not have the desired effect, though the extension of the Geary Act came through. Yeah, and there's discussion of just how much this was like an activist moment versus your stupid to turn away business that's going to help our country and particularly our community grow. But he did speak out against it, even though that did not play out the way they had hoped. In September of nineteen oh two, Levi Strauss was diagnosed after feeling a little unwell for a bit with a slight congestion of the liver, and it was believed that he was going to recover, and he did start to feel better, and two days after a doctor had visited and given him this diagnosis, Levi Strauss died after eating dinner with his family and then returning to bed. He was interred at the family mausoleum at the Home of Peace Cemetery after a funeral at his home, and his four surviving nephews inherited the business and his fortune. His nieces each received a significant sum to be given directly to them and not to their spouses or other male relatives for management. That was something that one of his brothers had done as well. And he also left money to all of the various charities that he had worked with over the years. So I will tell you, and if you have listened to this podcast for any period of time, you can understand why that as I researched this episode, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop because we have so many instances of really interesting seeming people that then in the course of actually digging into their biography we find out some horrifying thing that they did or were a part of. Here's the secret evil. I didn't think I was signing up for with this, right right, Oh, I thought this was like, no, they're horrible. And while Levi Strauss was certainly a shrewd businessman who did look after the interests of his company, he also seems to have been a genuinely nice and pretty good human being, surely not faultless. But I kept expecting some horrific thing to appear and it didn't. Yeah, We've got plenty of things that, like we said, were problematic, like being like, oh, no, we only employ white people. That, yeah, that's not great. But also it was not a case of like, let me literally enslave people in the basement, which seems like that's more often than not the story we accidentally wind up telling. And his prosperity, Levi Strauss upheld the Jewish ideology of benevolence. He donated money to worthy causes in the San Francisco community, both those run by various iterations of Jewish benevolent associations and non Jewish charities as well. Yeah, he actually started donating money almost as soon as he started making money after he moved to California. It seemed to have been just something that was deeply important to him. And in the eighteen sixties he donated to the US Sanitary Commission to help clean up Union camps to minim the rampant disease there. He advocated for and participated in a shutdown of businesses in San Francisco on election day on November eighth, eighteen sixty four. That was the election that Lincoln won for what would have been his second term. He was also one of the founders of the Concordia Society, which began in January of eighteen sixty five, which was a place where Jewish leaders and professionals could gather for social and educational events. Strauss was the club's first vice president. Yeah, that was another one of those institutions that was really forward facing in terms of looking to the future. They also wanted to make sure that young Jewish professionals could come in and learn from mentors and get a support system to help them succeed, and he became increasingly involved in community government and politics over the years. He seemed to think it was his responsibility as a successful person. He was a vocal supporter of the Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty of eighteen seventy five, which removed tariffs on goods traded between the Kingdom of Hawaii and the US, and he also advocated for building regulations that would reduce the risk of fire spreading in the increasingly tightly packed city. He had had some fires himself that impacted his properties, and so of course those efforts had benefit to other people, but they also benefited his personal business. He also drummed up donations for the Garfield Monument Fund Association, donated to orphanages, and helped set up the Labor Exchange, which was a group that was intended to help the unemployed men of the city make connections to find temporary and permanent work. He also became heavily involved in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which was incorporated in eighteen seventy six. He served in one leadership role or another with the organization for the rest of his life. That was a particularly important one to him, and as the eighteen nineties had moved on, Strauss had stayed busy, even though he was going through a lot of family tragedy at the time. He was working with other merchants and civic leaders to actualize infrastructure projects, including a railroad to compete with the Southern Pacific. He knew that as city that was appealing to new residents would mean sustained growth for the businesses there, so he was constantly donating both his personal money and on behalf of Levi Straussing Company to the creation of things like parks or the improvement of public spaces, and he supported efforts like the Pioneer Kindergarten Society because he knew that educating children was a vital part of making a future for the city. He was not only interested in early childhood education, though, He also donated to the University of California, Berkeley so they could keep their library open longer hours, and he created a scholarship fund at that school that Levi Straus Scholarship continues to this day. One of Strauss's employees named Henry Richmond, later wrote of him quote, mister Strauss was very quiet, affable, always immaculately dressed. Yeah, and he apparently did not like to be called mister Strauss. He wanted everybody to just call him Levi. He seems like a lovely, lovely gentleman. And I also wanted to include as our final note a point of trivia really to one of our previous episodes, because Levi Strauss was a founding member of the Pacific Coast Auxiliary of the Jewish Publication Society of America, and another member of that group was Ferdinand Toklas, father of Alice B. Toklas. It's one of those moments where you just see all the history puzzle pieces starting to click together. It's all connected, yes, And Levi Strauss is so connected in many ways like that to California history because you know, he was on all sorts of like public works committees and efforts with you know, people like Stanford and other famed people that really formed a lot of the foundation of California as we know it today. Yeah, thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete. Now. Our current email address is History Podcast at I heartradio dot com. Our old house stuffworks, email address no longer works. You can find us all over social media at mist in History, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.