Overalls.
There was a time in our younger years when it was easy to identify the farmer boys at school. They were the ones wearing the bib overalls. The rest of us wore Levis or Lee Riders or just denim jeans from Monkey Ward or Sears. The rich kids wore slacks, eventually the kind with buckles in the back.
For a while not long ago, bib overalls became fashionable, especially for girls. They came in bright colors—which made them fashionable. Some even had short legs. Can’t recall any of the green or pink overalls with the “Big Smith” label. Big Smiths had loops to hold hammers and were built for working comfort not for style. And, like all REAL bib overalls, they were blue.
Almost a hundred years ago, however, overalls were political statements. There were overalls clubs formed. The craze started in the southern and southwestern states. In April, 1920, W. H. Pahlen, an automobile accessory salesman walked into the St. Louis City Hall and announced he was a representative of the American Overall Club.
Pahlen met with F. W. Kuehl, the head of the Municipal Employees Union, and got permission to circulate lists for city employees to sign up as club members. Workers in Kuehl’s office, the Water Rates Office, quickly signed up, promising to wear overalls “whenever possible” until the prices of clothing had been lowered to a fair level.
That’s what the movement was all about. Clothing costs had taken off (to coin a phrase) in the post-war years and a lot of folks thought the situation was out of hand.
Mayor Henry Kiel refused to pledge to wear overalls but he didn’t object to employees showing up at city hall in denim. “I have lots of old clothes at home which I can wear in the time to come if I find the prices of new clothing too high…I have no objection to overalls; in fact, I have worn them myself long enough and I might wear them again but I have no interest in the overall club.”
City Sewer Commissioner William Clancy said his workers already had organized an overall club. In fact, his statement sounded like a mandate. “Until the cost of men’s clothing is reduced to a price commensurate with the ability of the employees of the sewer division to pay for same, all employees in the future will wear overalls.”
Real estate salesmen peddling lots in a new subdivision pledged to greet possible purchasers while wearing overalls until clothing prices came down. Other real estate salesmen were considered likely to follow suit (to coin another phrase appropriate to the discussion).
Ninety men at the Wagner Electric Company had formed a club, pledging to wear a standard khaki uniform each work day.
The members of the Central YMCA announced they planned to attend church services that day dressed in blue denim.
The Financial Corporation and Development Company chartered, under the common law, an Overall Club to solicit membership from “white-collared” citizens. Company Secretary E. Kreyling told a reporter, “Lawyers, office men, business men, are all getting in line with the army of blue denim-clad fighters against the profiteers. The association will equip its members with the uniform of the overall brigade and muster them in as high privates in the antiprofiteering army. There are no generals or colonels or other officers; all are privates.
Three-hundred students and three professors at Washington University signed the agreement to organize the Overall and Old Clothes Club at the school, promising to wear overalls or old military uniforms “or any other cast-off apparel” until “the objective of the national overall movement is attained.” A dance was scheduled at the school gymnasium with entrance restricted to those wearing old clothes.
About forty Wash-U coeds pledged to refuse to speak to any “gentleman friend” and refusing to be escorted to any event by any guy not dressed in overalls, old military uniforms, or old clothes.
In Washington, D. C., Congressman William D. Upshaw of Georgia caused something of a sensation when he showed up in the House of Representatives wearing overalls. Nothing unusual about it, he claimed. It was just a move “to strike at the high cost of clothing.”
But the movement had detractors. President Robert K. Rambo of the Southern Wholesale Dry Goods Association, not surprisingly, thought the whole thing was foolish because, “It will run the price of overalls up to a figure that cannot be paid by those who of necessity must wear them.” He thought it made as much sense for overall club members to refuse to buy cars until prices dropped 25 percent. “So long as people are willing to pay any price for the things they want and are not willing to practice self-denial, all talk about cutting down the high cost of living is gabble,” he said.
Owners of cotton mills in New England charged southern cotton-growers had started the whole thing in an effort to drive up the prices of cotton.
Our governor, Frederick Gardner, refused to join the overall club when it was formed in Jefferson City. He preferred to be a member of the W. Y. O. C., the “Wear Your Old Clothes” Club. One newspaper observed that it was hard to believe the governor’s claim that his newest suit had been made in 1914, six years earlier.
The Jefferson City Democrat-Tribune was an even harsher critic. It noted a week after the formation of the city’s club that it had not seen any of the signers of the pledge going around “in their best blue denim bib and tucker.” Instead of driving up the price of denim clothes, said an editorial, “Wear out you old clothes. Send them to the cleaner. Let’s wear patched clothes as we did in our youth, and we will do more to reduce the price of clothes than all the overall clubs in the world. Cut out useless spending and extravagance and the price of living in every community will be reduced.”
And a few days later, it called the overall movement the latest example of American “pinheadedness” and observing, “Why any sane-headed citizen, whose occupation does not require the wearing of apparel of this kind, should wear overalls to bring down the high cost of living is about as clear as a mud puddle.”
The movement played out in a few months—midsummer, probably. Its legacy might have been expressed by American Medicine magazine in April, as the movement was gaining momentum. “It is the first indication of protest to come from a class which has been a silent and patient sufferer during all the clashes that have taken place between capital and labor in recent years,” said an op-ed article.
Capital and labor remain part of our national dialogue today. We wonder what new clothing statement will emerge.