watch c-span as president donald trump delivers his first address to a joint session of congress. pres. trump:'s progress is going to be the busiest congress -- this congress is going to be the busiest congress we have had in decades. tuesday, three 28th. on tuesday, february 28. next, lynn downey discusses her new biography of levi strauss, who created his blue jeans business in san francisco in 1873. ms. downey served as a company's in-house historian -- ms. downey served as the company's in-house historian. she traces his long career and his contributions to the san francisco community in his later years. a stored photographs and advertising materials, the presentation also explores how blue jeans transformed with fashion trends from the 19th

century to today. the 70 minute event is hosted by the california historical society in san francisco. [applause] lynn: thank you, adam, and i'm so happy to be back here. 30 years ago, i worked at the california historical society when it was out on laguna, and it is always great to be back whatever it happens to be. i will spend time talking to you about the man i have spent over 25 years of my life with, and by the end of the evening, you will understand why. so, i was hired as the very first historian archivist for levi strauss company in 1989. when i walked into the door, i was not too surprised that there were not any historical records because of this. this is a picture of a company

1906,arters april 20, after the building had survived the massive earthquake, but not the fire. not unusual, you go to work for a company in san francisco founded for the earthquake, you will not have much, but i did not understand the impact it would have on my work. from the first historian archivist ever hired. it was important for me to understand the history right away. so, i started reading published histories of the company, newspaper articles, interviews with company managers going 50, 60, 70 years. i heard some interesting stories that contradicted themselves occasionally, but the basic story was levi strauss arrived in san francisco and 1850 off of a clipper ship and saw miners walking around san francisco with raggedy pants. he decided to make up your pants out of kansas. then he later died them blew up at the fabric from france, depended on who wrote the story.

rivets input some da, there were jeans. i realize the stores were completely made up. guess who make them up? the company. yeah. they really tried. they really tried to tell the early history, but they did not have anything to work with. these stories arose when there was a lot of competition in the denim world, and a company needed a powerful origin story about their jeans, and a made assumptions based on what they had, and we were left with 1850 clipper ship, ripped pockets, denim from france. my favorite story of the origin of the company was the london sunday times at that the company had been founded by the french anthropologist. [laughter] my personal favorite. entire time, almost

25 years with the company, to track down the story because there were no records, and i really did have to travel to find this story. in between my regular duties, that was what i would do. what i found was actually a person who was so much more interesting than the mythology. he was this cardboard cutout. town in san francisco, he was this cardboard cutout, but i found a person more complicated and interesting to anybody i could've imagined. so, let's start with his beginning. eb strauss and the bavarian town in guggenheim. , and tellr go there them you love their franconian's, they would love you and buy you a beer.

his father was a peddler. his grandparents -- his grandfathers were cattle traders. pedaling was a traditional jewish occupation. was his father's second wife. he and his sister sandy where the son and daughter of his second wife. he went to a tiny little synagogue and going to school, but he in the entire family and every jewish citizen was living under a law that had been passed in 1813 that was intended to make proper citizens out of bavarian jews, but took away so many rights. one of the things that was done hado this was every village to have a list, which was the list of every citizen in every town. it had very specific rules. couldhose were listed

marry or change the 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 list for him. if he married a widow, who also was on the list, or if he left his village and married another, or if another place on the list opened up -- if you are a young percent of, you cannot marry. there were a lot of other sanctioned illegitimate births in bavaria. it other bigger problem was cannot allow jews to carry on their traditional occupations. pedaling, cattle trading, two of the biggest occupations for the region. unless you are grandfathered in, you had to pick up farming or a small craft.

belay -- thews rauss boy could do whatever he wanted. the other three boys had no opportunities. they just got up and left. the oldest sister went to new york. three years later, the two other boys went to america. jonathan and lewis. -- 111840 and848 1841, and were sending letters back home how good things were in new york. the father dies of tuberculosis. the mother had a choice to make. she makes the important necessary decision to go to america.

if you wanted to lay bavaria and go to america, you had to apply to the marian government -- you have to apply to the bavarian government and you had to tell them why you wanted to leave without insulting the government at the same time. thanks to the record-keeping in the state archives, we actually have a statement that levi strauss wrote to explain the reasons why he was leaving along with his mother. it is very poignant. the favorable news that i have received from my stepbrothers in america has convinced me to follow them even though i do not know have 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 meet with them in foreign lands. i must join my mother in her plea. here,don't have a career just like my brothers, there is

no career here, so i will go to america and i will have something to do. this is very important because if you left bavaria, you had to leave my behind so that if he struck out in america or london and came back home, you are not a burden on the state. so between spring and autumn of 1848, rebecca strauss and her three children that on a ship and went off for new york. you can read in the book about the passage that you have to take to get to new york. and then they were very happy to finally land. where's my technology? in new york city. that ise into an area basically today the lower east side of new york. there were christian and jewish people from germany. and move in with lewis jonas strauss who were urban peddlers. they have store accounts and they would get stuff wholesale

and other own store accounts and walk around new york and they were basically urban paddlers. their business was called j. strauss. levi johnson starts learning the business and he is learning english. and in the census taker comes around in 1850 and takes the names of everyone in the household. there is someone named levi because he changed his name for number of reasons. the most important of which was nobody in america could pronounce loeb. --is aevi is the name name in the bible. it seemed like an appropriate name to take. then the gold rush happened and all of these reports are coming back, and so many jewish merchants are coming up to san francisco and all the little

towns in setting up retail stores. they are writing their families back home saying, come out to california. opportunities out here are amazing. if you wanted to calm to could be theou wholesaler and stay in san francisco and bring in the goods from new york and have your retail accounts back and gold rush country, or you could have your small retail stores of there. it was this amazing umbilical cord between san francisco and the gold country. sometime in 1852, the strauss family decided to send levi to california to open up the west coast branch. there is still some a questions about levi that will never be answered unless somebody find a diary or a letter in a truck somewhere. did he jump or was he pushed? did he want to go? did he think it was a great idea, or did the family say, guess what? you are getting on the boat. but yet something important to

do before he could leave. becamey 31st, 1853, he -- on january 31, 1853, he became an american citizen. five days later, he was on a steamer. there are many ways to get to san francisco. panama.est was to cross you took a steamer from new york to the caribbean side of it is took -- you took a steamer from new york to the caribbean side. depending on what time of year you were there, you rented a and you took the guilt of panama city on the pacific side, steamship up to

san francisco, which is what levi did. he turned 24 years old on the trip up. he landed here on march 14, 1853. he was a very serious young man. scarce, but i are am a most positive that he arrived in california but letters of introduction from merchants in new york that he could take up to the gold rush country to a store saying -- i would like to introduce you from -- i would like to introduce you to levi strauss. he probably also arranged to have a warehouse to the waterfront to store the good his brothers had only put in a clever ship going around the horn. it is 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 or the fleas don't let me sleep.

one of the very first customers that we know of that levi found was the store pardon and kennedy near auburn. this is the collection of dry goods that his brothers would send him -- pants, shirts, children's clothing. dry goods was anything that was not hardwood or food. -- hardware or food. it was the soft goods of everyday living. he cultivated all these clients and started this web beginning in california that kept on going. one of the things we know the least about is levi strauss' faith. andnow that he was jewish worship at temple emmanuelle. i would love to know on sabbath day if he was sitting in a pew next to edward norton. by the 1890's, levi was on the advisory board for women's

personal service. that is all we know. we don't know his personal feelings about his faith, but we will find out what he practiced the reflected his faith. when the civil war came to california, levi was a neighbor family can republican. was a lincoln republican. he voted for lincoln. he joined something called the committee of 84 looking for conspiracies against the union. there was a reason for that because there were a lot of southern advisors in california and san francisco. levi strauss prospered during the civil war because eastern

american ports were blockaded. dry goods were able to get to great britain and make a lot of money during the civil war. so, he did prosper and he did do well. 1850's, hiso late sister and her husband and her children moved from new york to san francisco to live with levi. he was alone for the first three years that he left here. by 1867, the company was in its headquarters. that picture that we saw of the building -- this is what it looked like before the earthquake and fire. it was on battery between pine and california, i believe. a beautiful, beautiful building. just --rted off with they basically had the entire block. the company had been just levi strauss. was levi by 1863, it

strauss and co. his sister mary had passed away. it was really becoming a family business. now, it was easy to make money in san francisco, but it was also easy to lose it. what levi did was put gold, called treasure, my favorite historical work, onto steamships that were carted on another steamer to go up to new york, and he sent the gold to his brothers to buy more dry goods. goldompany had $76,000 in on this boat that went down in a hurricane off of south carolina in september of 1857. that is about $2 million of value today. some people found that boat in the 1980's. 80's, they found a

pair of pants in the trunk. it is very likely the company to get an insurance payment. they were good about making sure a lot of the shipments were insured. levi had a pretty good sales set up by the 1870's. here they are. levi's them wearing because they were not invented yet, but they were probably wearing denim. what was interesting was that levi had dry goods customers in mexico, canada, and hawaii in the late 1860's and early 1870's. he understood the value of the pacific rim. so he thinks, i am going to be a wholesaler of the rest of my life, i'm prosperous, my family

is growing, my sister and her husband are having more kids, the business is doing great. i am a happy capitalist. that is what he thought he would do for the rest of his life until 1872, when he got a letter from this guy. this guys jacob davis. -- this guy is jacob davis. it was russia at the time. he came to the united states in 1854. he was trained as a tailor. in lateto california 1850 four and decided to try the whole gold mining thing, and it did not work. he changed his name to davis by this time. he went all over the place, and by the mid-1860's, he was up in canada, got married, started to have a family, rennie brewery -- ran a brewery. in 1867, he was in virginia city, one of the hubs of the

mining regions. populationd it as a of 15,000 people of which 5000 were minors, 5000 were gamblers and prostitutes, and 5000 were and --smen, speculators, reno after moved to reno had been established. clustered around the pacific railroad. local businesses supported mining and agriculture. he set up there as a tailor. he had the reno brewery for a wild. -- for a while. east and did some tailoring. even tried store keeping for a while, but he always came back to reno. by this time, he was making tent covers, horse blankets, and agon --covers --w and

and wagon covers. a woman walked into his him tong shop and asked make her a pure pants for her husband. her instructions -- he gives her a string to send back with her to measure her husband. he was working with a fabric that comes from the dutch for canvas. it is pretty sturdy stuff, kind of off-white. over on the table, he had horse blankets. he used to reinforce the scenes and stress points of the blankets with ribbons. he looks up and says, i wonder if i could put rivtes in these pants -- rivets in these pants?

he did. he gives them to the woman. received the guy walking around town wearing his pants and the guy was really happy, and people started hearing about these pants. in to buye coming more, so he decided, he has a big moneymaking idea. he was a frustrated invented. ps she had a patent on a type of close -- on a type of clothes press already. he wanted to mass market these pants. a lot of the fabric he had at his shop he got from levi strauss. one of his wife's cousin came back with duck and thread. he knew the name levi strauss. yes is moneymaking idea and

since examples of the pants down to levi with a letter that says -- here is a big moneymaking idea. let's be partners and do this together. trust,hat shows a lot of you have to admit. what would have prevented levi from running off with the idea? but he knew levi's reputation and new he would not do that. he also knew that levi was not manufacture, but thought big. he was an idea guy. documents and copies in the national archives in philadelphia, there is his handwritten note, right to this guy. awarded.t was awarded afterwas three tries on may 20, 1873 for an improvement of fastening

pocket openings, which is really boring language for the invention of the blue jean. it gets pretty exciting right off the bat. there is a magazine published at a san francisco called "pacific rural press." the kind of people who would wear really tough, riveted pants and he had an article about the pants and one of there issues -- and one of their issues. i want to redo a little bit of it. -- i want to read you a little bit of it. we are sure it is going to be popular which are working men. tohing looks more slouchy see a man with his pockets hanging down and no other part of the clothing is apt to be torn and ripped like the pockets. besides it's something --

appearance,slouchy -- i don't think the men think their pants look slouchy. there would be no more slouchy since they would have rivets in them. this is a picture of the oldest pair of jeans in the archives. these are the oldest urgings in the archives that are blue denim. blue denim has one of those weird histories. no one knows the real story. denim was created first in france in the 17th century and it was a type of weave. by the time in the textile and factors were making it, they were calling it -- even though

you have a english fabric and give it a good french name, it is good marketing. but then the anglo sized the work to denim. , it was8th century always in english denim and it was always cotton. in the beginning, it was a wool and soak blend. -- and silk blend. there are people who say levi at the denim from france for his first jeans. and they say, no, the first jeans were made of denim and the denim came from manchester, new hampshire. yeah. [laughter] it was the biggest textile mill in the country and they make the very best denim. they were so huge. they had their own foundry and when they cannot get enough cotton during the civil war, the converted their foundry and made gum and fire engines.

and they did make the very best of them in the united states. there were no textile mills and california. levi had to go all the way to manchester, new hampshire. place tohave to find a set up shop. the company did not own any manufacturing space until the 1880's. the least a, so market street and had to advertise for women to sew the pants. they were very much in favor of them being women. this was a typical ad in the san francisco chronicle. wanted -- 51st-class female sewing machine operators who can bring their own machines with them. number two -- employment at 415 market st upstairs. , i hadthis and thought

this image of these poor women dragging these machines up market street, but they were very small and portable at this time, and apparently not unusual for women to take them around with them. eventually, the company did get some sewing machines of the women didn't have to bring our own. they got lots of answers to the ad, and i believe by the 1880's, the company's owned and operated factory around the corner. levi had brought jacob davis from reno to be in charge of the manufacturing and levi stayed with the dry goods, which is what he knew. jacob was in charge. jacob and his family lived on. street. he became a levi strauss and company employee. they knew how to have a good time. this is an employee picnic on

angel island about 1899. so, these pants are called overalls because in the old days, that is what working pants were called. if you wanted big overalls, you had to ask for those specifically. overalls,ed for waste you got what we today call blue jeans. this was pure work wear. 19th century and was really tough. so, among the early consumers were of course, cowboys. that state as a classic consumer for a very long time. miners of course, there were still a lot of gold and silver being found in the west until the 1920's. foundirs of levi's were in mines. we know the penn state into the 1920's. that is how long mining was

going on. an agricultural workers. i believe this is near elk grove and sacramento. there was one very important person who never wore appear blue jeans in his life. [laughter] and that was levi strauss. it would be completely inappropriate for him to wear jeans. he was not a laborer. he was a wealthy businessman, capitalist. silkre a black suit with a tie and carried a top hat. i state my reputation in my pension on the fact that levi strauss never wore appear blue jeans in his life. 20 06, the city of reno dedicated a plaque on virginia street in reno, which is where jacob davis had had his kingdom and shop. -- his tailoring shop. in 1873, levi bought the building from jacob so he could have enough money to move to san francisco.

in 1875, he sold it back to jacob davis for one dollar and jacob davis sold it again. jacob made a tidy sum on that identifiedhich was by the re-owned historical commission. i was very happy to have joined the plaque ceremony. the oldest pair of jeans to , but earlier is priceless the insurance value was $150,000 is in that case i am holding. i told them i would come with the security. this is my security. [laughter] wyatt earp, fully armed, yes. they had a lot of fun driving me to the reception afterwards. they were saying, we could take the jeans and leave her out in the desert. [laughter] that was a fun day. manufacturing is going on in the company was making a lot of flyers.

for the salespeople to get to potential clients. a lot of them were seen something called home industry, de that they co only hard white women and girls. pieces ofe of the levi history that is classic and standard for san francisco history that i have the pleasure to talk about because that is how they told me to write this book is that levi strauss did not hire chinese in his factory because discrimination in san francisco was about the chinese. the railroad had been completed in 1869 and there were no more jobs. men were and chinese coming into san francisco to look for jobs that there was hateful rhetoric, violence, and people do not want their photos made by chinese who lived in that strange place called chinatown and eight weird food. the rhetoric at the time was truly horrendous. -- this wasnded up

a priceless that would have gone to a retail store manufactured by white labor. there is quite a few of those. for a while, it was stamped inside the pocket of the jeans. it was a selling point. it was a point of pride or the company. i don't know how levi strauss personally felt about the chinese, but as a businessman, he knew there was no way he could sell his product and keep his business unless he adhered to the prevailing prejudice. we do not like it, but it is real. that is who he was. that i findeasons so fascinating is because he is not predictable, and he's complicated, and maybe he may not have been very easy to like. that is why he was so interesting to me. by the 1870's, the company was getting government contracts for its dry goods. they would bid with the state to supply the dry goods for a

variety of state-funded organizations. one of them was the bureau of prisons. so, for years, 1870's into the 1880's, levi straus and company had a contract percent clinton -- san full prison, quentin prison, full some prison. this is the actual language from one of the contracts that said levi strauss and company won the id for convict suitsf at folsom prison. levi strauss and company products were sold to prisons, but some of levi's customers should have been in prison. and i want to tell you a little story. was very well-known retailers in arizona by the

1880's. michael and joseph moved to america and change their name to goldwater and had stores all kinds of businesses all over arizona. and joseph came to san francisco quite a bit to do the shopping for the stores at all of the store wholesale houses. and levi strauss and company was a goldwater's customer. were allthe newspapers a twitter because joseph goldwater {suddenly of the land of the rattlesnake tarantula. goldwater had made extensive purchases on credit by the biggest firms in san francisco including levi strauss and company. he hightailed it back to arizona unwilling to pay for the goods. things over to a partner in yuma and tells everybody, i am not paying. all of the wholesale merchants in san francisco called the u.s.

marshal. the u.s. marshal and a few other lawmen to yuma to either retrieve the goods or rest goldwater and his partner. the sacramento daily record union reported, the defendants have men barricaded on the premises, armed with shotguns and declared they would resist that all hazards. the marshall said that he will serve the process regardless of the consequences. if resistance is offered by the mob, there will surely be bloodshed. it is a john wayne movie. so what happens? a marshall shows up in yuma, theyare barricaded, and arrest joseph goldwater and bring him back to san francisco, and they quietly make a little settlement for a few pennies on the dollar for what they owed. in the incident just faded away. the goldwater's remained in the retail business in arizona and joseph's great-nephew became a

u.s. senator. in 1964, he ran for president, and what was his name? exactly. these are very interesting people to work with, believe me. and levi, i hope he had a good time with that story. go levi -- this is where we back to how he is expressing his faith. that was goldwater. i think it is in phoenix. after levi year arrived in san francisco, he made his first terrible contribution, five dollars, to an orphan asylum society. it is in the sunset district and still in business. that was the beginning of a lifelong process of philanthropy that was personally important to him, and very much a tenant of his jewish faith.

hiss really easy to track giving because a lot of it showed up in the newspapers. there are personal donations he made in corporate donations, and when i evaluated where his money went, you can see that a lot of money went to take care of young people and educate young people. an associationan with the university of california at berkeley. he and some other men gave money to the university in 1896 to like the pathways on the campus and to put lights in the library so that students could stay later and study. in 1897, that the california state assembly had authorized scholarships for every single -- there were 35 assembly districts in california at that time, and it was a scholarship from one student for every assembly district, which could be a huge piece of geography. regent, theo the

head of the regions of the university of california berkeley, and said, i would like to match those scholarships. i would like to match that money for every simply district in california. and of course, the regions accepted his offer and created the levi strauss scholarship, which was first awarded to 21 student, half of which were women, in 1898. that scholarship is still in place today at uc berkeley. i have a great honor of meeting the latest crop of the levi strauss scholars the year before i retired. it is still on the books and still maintained by the family. it is quite wonderful. so, he is becoming this wonderful philanthropist. but the businesses keep on going. and he and a lot of his managers know that when you have a patent on something -- they had a patent on the process of wearing riveted clothing. have toly, inventions

benefit the public domain, so they knew in 1892, that patent would run out and anyone to start making riveted clothing. as we get closer and closer to as we get closer and closer to the 1890's, the company started basically branding the product. in 1886 m of the famous two horse poll, we don't know if it was ever true, they put on the patch, on the pants and also used in print on flyers, on invoices, everywhere, blanketed everything with this logo. it was partly branding, but i feel it was another reason. not everybody in the american west was rich. not everyone in the american west spoke english as their first language. if you go into a first -- into a store and there is a competitor's product, and you don't speaking with were read, you can say, i want the one with the horses. you point to the picture of the brand that you want.

it is smart marketing, and fairly common. the product was called the two-horse brand until 1927 when they registered the name levi so it was not generic likely next. forever, it was the two horse brand. we don't have a lot of images -- they might call him uncle levi. survive them did fire. they came from family members whose belongings to not go up in flames. one of the other problems is he died in his nephews house on leavenworth street at gary, which also went down in the fire. anything personal in that family home that was his also was lost. that was part of the problem, corporate records and personal records. this is one of the very few. in about 1890, the company started to assign three digit slot numbers to its products.

that is when we first see -- 1890 or 1892, this famous 501. this is one of my drink the dinner, people would tell me, i know the number 1 -- no you don't. nobody knows. i have theories. numbers, and the company had its own manufactured products, everything got a three digit number. it sort of describes -- the first pants were just called xx, double x overalls. competition is coming in. there was desire we would make it easy for retailers to order stuff, give everything a number. no one knows that his number came from. my favorite reason -- my favorite literally published explanation for this was some book. the reason they were called 501 is because they had 500 rivets on them. [laughter] try walking in a

pair of pants with 500 rivets and don't go out in the sun come up because they will heat up as you know. copper conducting. so nobody knows. there is also the mythology, the very famous double arch of stitching on the back of the pockets which they call the arcuate, like a bow and arrow. so when i first started with the company, i kept reading all of these explanations. it is the wing spread of a bird, it is this and this. nobody knows. but someone in the company said, it references the wing spread of the rocky mountains eagle. ok, the rocky mountains are not in california. there is no such bird as the rocky mountain eagle, and number three, nobody knows, so stop saying it. it is still out there. i am fighting cyberspace. i can find public newspapers with this, it was ok. now i am fighting cyberspace. that is one of the things i

wrote the book. stop saying these things. so the company started making these beautiful handbills for their salesman to take to potential retailers. that imagery, branding, give you a picture to help you understand the product kind of thing. this shows a variety of different products and men, or children, that could wear the products. the flipside of this has all the wonderful language about the strength of the product, the original blah blah blah. any retailer would have both of what you needed, visual branding and the actual language. there was newspaper advertising and the bodie career and funky's newspaper all around the west, really interesting visual display as well, strong and durable, great language. and then my personal favorite. [laughter]

lynn downey: this tells you everything you need to know about how strong your pants are. there is language. there is information. there is a two horse, then there is the guy. whose face is that? that is levi strauss' face. this tells me the man had a sense of humor, and he didn't mind being caricatured for his business. i just absolutely loved it. not because of the coppertone add. i just add this -- love this because of his face. it goes along with other stories i found and letters people had written to the company early in the century that his employees called him levi, not mr. strauss . his customers: levi. he did not have this -- called him levi. he did not have this distance between people that wore jeans or not. he appeared to be a truly

personal and guy with a great sense of humor. one think is modern, you go by something, you get a gift with purchase -- that goes back a really long way. this gift was purchased. the flipside in 1899, a calendar. these were created for the company retailers. if you bought a levi product, you were given this lovely the calendar printed for free, the name of your friendly retailer, so you remember where you got it. they also created trade cards. every consumer product company america made trade cards. they were like business cards, but people collected them like business card -- baseball cards and they would paste them into scrapbooks. they created some with miners on them, engineers -- there was a little bit of language on the back, the retailer's name printed for free. you bought a believe byproduct, you got -- a levi trade card.

1880's, 1890's, here is the battery street. they are taking over the whole building. the levi strauss sign was so huge. you saw pictures there forever. and that this is actually from , the uc berkeley your book. it was called our benefactor. there is levi on the left near hearst, which is interesting. the first recipients of the levi strauss fellowship surprised levi at his home one night. he happened to be visited by jacob ryan stein and hearst that night. the students all troops in, all 21, and presented him with a plaque, thanking him for the

scholarship that had enabled all of them to go to college, which of course was lost in the flames. here he is near the end of his life. the happy philanthropist, the happy capitalist. levi never married. he moved in with his sister fanny and her family when he was in his early 40's. then she passed away, and he lived with his older nephew, jacob started, and that was his house he was living in that went down in 1906. this was inadvertent. he was probably visiting -- in everton. he was probably visiting family friends. they all look tired. let's go take a picture by the tree. one of the few that we have. strauss had left almost 50 years earlier. he heard the cemetery in his home village in guggenheim was falling apart, and the town fathers want to do we service

is. they want it -- wanted to refurbish it. they did not have enough money. he spent half the amount of money needed to renovate the cemetery in his home village. they were able to do it. he had not lived there for almost 50 years. he had almost never been back. he somehow kept in touch with people in guggenheim. this is his father's friend, in 2007.isited his father was there, his grandparents, his family, no one in his you saw and heard statements, no one remained in guggenheim, but it was important family'sfamilies -- graves taken care of. that was very poignant. 26th, 1902. he was 73 years old. he had not felt good for several days. and never woke

up. the funeral was held at his home . the rabbi of temple emanuel gave the eulogy here they had a special train to go down tacoma to close the business for the day and employees could come to the funeral. language from the eulogy -- people always see nice iings about the eulogy, but have a feeling everything was true. everything was sincere. there were so many obituaries and articles about him that it just seemed to echo everything the rabbi had said that makes me feel it was very true. so the earthquake and fire happened, building goes down. to fourthe business nephews. he had four nephews and three nieces. he left the majority of business to the nephews. he left lots of money to orphanages, mostly orphanages,

and what were called benevolent organizations. these were mostly for the jewish indigent, widows and orphans who could not take care of themselves. there was the first hebrew benevolent society. he left a lot of money. each knees at $25,000 -- niece got $25,000, and the bulk of his business to these four nephews. his estate was valued at $6 million, and that is 1902. the four nephews did not have to work. they were incredibly wealthy. they had real estate. the graph skated on money rest of their lives, but they rebuilt the company. they built the building on the very same place. where else are you going to go in san francisco? 98 battery. it is still there, at the corner of pine. the country -- company was there until the 1970's when they went

to embarcadero center. kept my company name. they could have started over and say, now we are stern brothers. it was levi strauss and cow again. -- and co. again. the family that owns the company is the odds family. i'm sure everyone has heard of them, who knows how they are related. i will give you the family tree. one of levi strauss' nephews was sigmund stern. that was his nephew. he and his wife had a daughter named italy's. elyse.e's -- it is his descendents that only company today. half, the adorable child on the right, is the man who hired me as historian. he is the reason i call levi uncle levi because he is the

great-grant -- great great grand nephew. interest insold his the patent back to the company around 1906, and he died in 1908. his son simon worked for levi for 20 years, that he left and started his own clothing business, which did not do well. in 1935, he opened another business named after his son, which is still in business today , ben davis. they were a clothing company with a little guerrilla. ben davis, jacob davis' grandson. they are still in business today. levi's plaza was opened in 1982, where the archives is, and it is still a mainstay of san francisco, right on battery street. if you have ever been there, there is a beautiful fountain, and the remains of a gold rust ship underneath. whenever excavating levi's

plaza, the american museum came across the remains of the gold ship and were able to do an amazing study of what was there. the company still operates today. in guggenheim, 1998, the city was able to figure out which house levi strauss had been built in, -- born in, and it was still there. the city bought the house and turned it into a museum, and is the levi strauss museum. it is a wonderful place. it is about this big. it is a wonderful village full of breweries and fascinating people. they hired a tremendous young woman to be the director. she is the reason i was able to go to the state archives. she is the one who found so much of the german occupation about levi's life translated for me. that is the reason we have a story from his early years. it is a lovely, lovely place. i insist you go.

fly into nuremberg, you get a car, and you go. call tonya. it is truly a lovely place. so many biographers, when they spend their lives or years and years with a subject, sometimes they get to the end of their book and they are like, i have sick of this person. that never happened to me. that never happened to me at all working on this book. the reason is because of something i said earlier. levi was so complicated. he was not that carport cut out. he was truly -- cardboard cutout . with a true philanthropist, and he was a hardass. you either pay your bill or give you back the stuff. he was so contradictory. he wasn't boring. he was so fascinating to me as a , why i justa book

continually was fascinated, everything i found out about him added to the amazing story. earlier in my career, i met a michael, who. john is the great-grandson of jonas strauss, levi's oldest brother. their family does have a photo that they were not living in san francisco during the earthquake and fire, they were able to save it. he has always let a use this picture at the end of my talk. i absolutely adore this picture. it is the only one we really see him smiling. he has a cigar, he has a pantomime at, and i just love this picture. i hope that he was as happy as he looks near the end of his life. in 1960, some very smart person at levi strauss and co. interviewed people. they interviewed people who worked with him when he was still alive. they worked -- talked to a

sewing machine operator and said, what would levi like? she said, he was tough but a fine fellow. thank you. [applause] lynn downey: thank you very much . i am happy to answer questions. you can stand at the mc or you won't -- mic or you won't end up on the footage. you can raise your hand and walk on over. >> hi there. i grew up in fishersville, pennsylvania. homerents had brought a from a previous mill. our home had been the superintendent of the mill's home. i knew this mill very well. it was like my playground. it does not operate now. it had been through all reports

a manufacturer of kentucky jeans for civil war veterans. in other words, how does this predate levi strauss come into this picture? lynn downey: i am glad you asked the question. the word jean and jeans is one of the archives wrestling things. there was a fabric called jeans, which was being made at the same time as denim. it was indigo blue light denim. it was easily absorbed by the cotton, the color that everybody liked, whatever. pants made of jean fabric were called jeans, and kentucky jeans was a very specific type of pants. it originally was made in kentucky, but it was one of those things -- everybody knew what kentucky jeans were, and they were made in other places but not always in kentucky, but it was made of jean fabric.

denim is one white and one colored together. jeans was two of the same color. it looks like denim, but denim will have that white, the phil will come through a little bit. jean fabric was just blue. jeans -- levi strauss had sold jean pants in his dry good inventory before the denim. here is what we called jeans today. men have worn on riveted denim pants when they were denim overalls. when levi strauss created rivets, it was a new category of work where, which is the blue jeans, but they were called overalls until the 1950's. teenage boys who thought marlon brando wearing 501 jeans in movies with scary motorcycle guys, they wanted to be like him and where those pants here the dads told them overalls, so they started telling them jeans. they did not want to wear overalls like their jeans -- like their dads.

it had to be cool like merlin brando. i don't know why they appropriated that word, but it was the new word. it was the new word for the pants. it was a new, modern word for something that had been around since the 1870's. kentucky jeans were pants made out of jean fabric. i know it is very confusing. [laughter] cover itey: i try to in the book, but i don't how successful i was. who else? oh, come on. the microphone. >> i am very curious to know why he never married. did you find any evidence of a relationship ever in germany, here, was he just married to his job? what is the story? lynn downey: he gave a number of interviews in which he said his life was his business, but we have no letters, no diaries. everybody every -- everybody always asks me that question.

we don't know if he was gay. we don't know. the one thing about history is that you never know. next front home i.t. someone that said i found a diary, i found some letters, but because so much of the personal stuff is gone, we don't know. the fact he moved in with his sister tells me he never had any intention to. and he was sent out here in his 20's to be the west coast branch of the business. he had to build the business to support his family in new york. he might have had so much on his shoulders that he decided his wife was his business. that is the only quote i found that comes close to explaining it. unless we find the records, we will never know. come on up. about theondering history of the factory on valencia street. lynn downey: yes, the valencia street factory was built in 1906

after the fremont street factory went down in the earthquake and fire. it was put up very quickly. it opened in november 1906, and it was a working factory, still working factory when i started 1989.9 -- it was turned over to laboratories, laundries, experimentation. they were still making 501 jeans the japanese market into the early 1990's, but it became too expensive to manufacture out of the property. in 2008, i believe, the company sold the building to the san francisco school, and they gave the money to the ridiculous -- to the redevelopment fund. it went back to the district. renovated the the building, but they kept the soul of the building. they were used a lot of the materials on the inside for staircases. a lot of their benches. they recycle to the interior.

it had lots of long hallways. it was perfect for a class. it retained the wonderful soul of the factory. how did you find the oldest pair of jeans? [laughter] lynn downey: how did i find the oldest pair of jeans? somebody called me on the phone. in 25 years, one of my jobs was to shop, spend the company's money on really old jeans read i didn't have to go anywhere to do it. when people knew the company was buying vintage products, it just showed up. , whos a private dealer always wanted to remain anonymous. east -- he stole it -- he sold it to the company. it was somebody who found them. people rarely told me where they found the old jeans because they did not anyone -- want anyone going where there might be more. as a historian, it makes me crazy. i think we knew the provenance

or maybe two or three of the early pieces of denim in the archives, but they would come out of barnes and sellers in mines and trunks. cellars and mines, and trunks. >> to questions. i am curious about the timeline with some of the changes were made like that rivet at the bottom of the fly, the back pocket, and the second question would be the trunk they found, what those ended up selling for. lynn downey: i don't know the answer to the second question because i don't work at the company and don't know. the changes of the jeans went over time. because of changes in fashion and wanting to modernize what the jeans were. the rivets on the back pockets were always on the outside, but in the 1920's and 30's, the

company was getting the plane saying the rivets are scratching our shot -- our saddles. so what the company did was put the rivets in the pockets, but thehe pockets over -- sew pockets over. they were taken out completely in 1967. there was a rivet at the ace of the button fly, the indelicate named garage vivid. -- crotch rivet. when we can't at the campfire -- it is a really delicate place. the company was like, what a bunch of whidbey cowboys. whimpy cowboys. world war ii started, and american clothing manufacturers had to take a certain amount of metal off of their clothing. so nobody likes this rivet, we have to get rid of it. it never came u