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Clothes and Shoes for All

Stitches with Staying Power

Most people who came to California during the Gold Rush were searching for gold. Levi Strauss had a different reason. He was a merchant from Bavaria who came to the United States to make a better life for himself. When he sailed from New York to San Francisco, he brought supplies with him to sell to miners. Levi quickly sold everything he had except for a roll of thick, strong cloth called canvas. He had planned to sell this canvas as a material to make tents or wagon covers. Instead, he was told, "Should'a brought pants."

Mining work was hard on clothes. All day long the miners would kneel and dig in dirt or gravel. Pants wore out quickly. Levi had an idea. He asked a tailor make a pair of work pants from canvas. The pants were a hit! Soon Levi's canvas pants were selling very well. In fact, he couldn't get enough cloth to make pants for all the miners who wanted them! He had made the first Levi's.

Levi and a partner started a clothing company. First they made the popular canvas pants. Later they began using a blue denim cloth that was called genes in France. In America, the pants were called "blue jeans" or just "jeans." When the company added copper rivets to make the pants even sturdier, the jeans we know today were born. Levi Strauss's company became one of the biggest clothing companies in the country. People around the world still use his name every time they call a pair of denim pants "Levi's."

A Machine Built to Last

Are you one of the lucky people who owns a pair of shoes? That might seem like a silly question. At one time, though, it wasn't silly at all.

In the past, shoes were made by hand so they cost a lot of money. Owning new shoes that fit was a sign of wealth. Now, thanks
to many inventors and the machines they created, many more people can afford to buy new shoes.

Perhaps the most important of all shoe-making machines was invented by Jan Matzeliger. His invention allowed shoes to be made entirely by machines. Jan Matzeliger was born in South America. His ancestors were from Africa on his mother's side and from Holland on his father's side.

Like Levi Strauss, Matzeliger came to the United States in search of a better life. By 1873, he found work in the shoe factories of the Northeast. Soon he learned how all kinds of shoe-making machines worked. However, there was no machine that could do the important step of attaching the sole of a shoe to the upper part. This step is called lasting. Since lasting had to be done by hand, it took a long time to make each pair of shoes. As a result, shoes were very expensive.

Matzeliger thought he could build a machine for lasting shoes. Other people told him it could not be done. He took on the challenge anyway. The young man worked long and hard to design a "lasting" machine.

First, he watched workers lasting shoes by hand. He tried to make his machine copy their movements. His first two tries failed, but he did not give up. He lived and worked in very poor conditions, and his health became quite bad. Soon, he ran out of money. But Matzeliger was lucky. He found two men who agreed to pay for his tools and supplies.

Finally, he built a machine that could last 75 shoes in one day. Jan Matzeliger had invented a machine people said could not be made! Still, he did not quit. Instead he worked to improve his machine. Finally, he had made a machine that cut the cost of shoes in half. Many more shoes were made than ever before. Matzeliger made it possible for almost everyone to afford a pair of shoes!

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