Hosiery industry, 40 million women hit by silk order (8-3-41)

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The Pittsburgh Press (August 3, 1941)

HOSIERY INDUSTRY, 40 MILLION WOMEN HIT BY SILK ORDER
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McNutt pledges federal aid to 175,000 workers; tongues wag on necessity for bare or cotton-clad legs; shoppers rush stocking counters
…
By the United Press

pitts
Faced with a possible shortage of silk stockings, women shoppers throughout the nation were staging rushes on hosiery counters and shops yesterday. Here is a typical scene in a Pittsburgh department store as the word got around that American hosiery mills face a quick shutdown as the government ordered production halted on all silk for civilian use.

An Office of Production Management order, effective at midnight Saturday, stopping use of silk in the manufacture of hosiery and non-military items, ran smack into the fashion foibles of upwards of 40 million American women today and set tongues wagging over prospects of longer skirts, bare legs, and the return of cotton stockings.

More serious was the plight of 175,000 hosiery workers who were laced with loss of their jobs. In Philadelphia, the nation;s hosiery center, a majority of 235,000 workers were believed in immediate danger of unemployment unless ways were found quickly of producing enough nylon, rayon and long-fibered cotton substitutes.

Federal Security Administrator Paul V. McNutt said that the government would seek new jobs immediately for the silk workers, adding they had an excellent chance of being re-hired in defense industries.

Rayon set aside

The Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply ordered rayon yarn producers to set aside one-tenth of production and yarn stocks for hosiery and silk manufacturers.

The most potentially significant angle of the situation turned up in Washington when Ruth O’Brien, chief of the Clothing and Textile division of the Bureau of Home Economics, who has directed three years of government research leading to the development of stylish cotton hosiery, announced that American mills are now ready to manufacture 40 million pairs a year.

About 20% of stockings now manufactured are rayon and a few are nylon, but these materials are limited because of defense needs. Miss O’Brien said four out of five pairs of hose would soon be made of the new cotton, which was sad to be stylish and smooth as silk, longer wearing, and not subject to “runs.”

Boom in sales

Meanwhile, women in many cities across the country were crowding into stores to start a boom in silk stocking sales. There was talk of lowered hemlines to cover bare or cotton-encased legs, but style centers and retailers foresaw no change in skirt lengths. Women interviewed across the country generally turned thumbs down on cotton hose.

Bare legs were considered, particularly during the summer months. But one Dallas dealer said Texans considered them “crude,” and that attitude seemed to be general.

A Department of Agriculture estimate said that about 36 million American women wear an average of a dozen pairs of silk hose each per year; six million wear rayon at a dozen pairs a year, and a million wear nylon or cotton at a dozen pairs a year.

Cotton council busy

The National Cotton Council in Memphis was quick to rise to its opportunity. It said in a statement directed to American womanhood:

Just because you can’t get silk stockings don’t go bare legged this winter. Failure to wear any stockings at all is flirting with colds and pneumonia… It is both practical and patriotic to wear cotton stockings.

An informal poll of women shoppers disclosed that most liked nylon better than silk, that they would “hate” to wear cotton hose, and that they approved bare legs until fall.

The rush for silk in Detroit this week more than doubled last week’s sales. Department store buyers said they believed they could sell fine lisle with a rayon mix, if necessary, but doubted that women would accept bare legs or lower hemlines. They pointed out that cotton feet and tops were accepted three years ago when hosiery prices rose.

Texas sales brisk

Texas department stores reported a brisk, increasing business in silk hose, and it was estimated that the state’s silk stocks would be exhausted by Jan. 1.

In Columbus, Ohio, sales in three large stores “skyrocketed.” Bare legs were said to be popular only among Ohio State University coeds. Both men and women were rushing to buy silk stockings. The average price for women’s silk hose was $1, and women there said they would wear cotton when silk was gone – but not until then.

The increase in silk buying in St. Louis ranged from 10-40% this week. The jump in sales in Kansas City this week ranged from 20% in low-priced shops to 300% in leading department stores. Kansas City retailers said there had been no appreciable retail price advance but expected one within 30 days.

Cotton for feet, tops

Manufacturers said they had been discussing with customers the possibility of going back to cotton feet and tops and pointed out that it would be possible to have four or five-inch cotton tops without lengthening skirts.

Buying was brisk in Atlanta; one women bought $27 worth of silk hose. In Cleveland, department stores noticed no upward trend in sales, but a manager of a door-to-door silk sales company said business had doubled in the last 10 or 15 days.

Nylon and medium grade silk stockings were most in demand in a buying rush in Pittsburgh, where ione department store reported a singled sale of $123, or 84 pairs. Prices were rising as much as 20¢ a pair in medium grade hosiery. Bare legs were increasing and leg “makeup” sales were rising.

Women in Indianapolis queried on the street and by department store sales girls said that bare legs were “out” and that went also for cotton stockings, unless everybody wore them. They suggested as a solution stopping the manufacture of men’s silk stockings, since men:

…wouldn’t know the different anyhow.

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RAYON YARN ALLOCATED FOR HOSIERY PLANTS

Washington, Aug. 2 (UP) –
The Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply tonight ordered rayon yarn producers to set aside one-tenth of their production and yarn stocks for hosiery and silk manufacturers.

This move is necessary, the OPACS said, to prevent:

…widespread unemployment and economic dislocation.

The order, calling on the rayon industry to start the allocation immediately, was issued shortly before the OPM’s order goes into effect at midnight giving the government complete control of all silk supplies and suspending all silk processing for civilian manufacture.

The OPM edict threatened to throw 175,000 silk workers out of jobs. With this critical unemployment situation in view, Federal Security Administrator Paul V. McNutt earlier in the day moved to find jobs for these workers.

Mr. McNutt instructed the Bureau of Employment Security to have its regional officers arrange for immediate registration by State Employment Services of silk industry workers whose jobs are about to end. Mr. McNutt said that these workers have excellent chances of finding new jobs because the silk industry is concentrated in the industrial East where defense industry demand for labor is keen.

Mr. McNutt also said that he is considering establishing special training and retraining courses which would enable former silk workers to find new jobs.

The total present capacity of the rayon industry is not enough to satisfy complete defense and civilian requirements plus the new demand that has arisen from hosiery mills and other manufacturers now cut off from all raw silk supplies, the OPACS said.

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U.S. LEGS TO STAY SMOOTH; CONGRESSMAN SHOWS HOW

Washington, Aug. 2 (UP) –
Congressman Clarence Cannon of Missouri – the “Show Me” state" – took another look at the shapely pair of legs perched on top of his office desk and announced today that nary a fair leg need go bare this winter.

Pointing to the legs encased in cotton stockings, he said proudly:

There is the answer to Japan and all of her silk. They are a 100% American product for 100% American women.

Rep. Cannon stroked one of the legs gently from ankle to knee.

It is just as smooth as silk.

Handing the plastic cast leg to a newsman, he said:

Here, you feel of it.

Mills all set

Miss Ruth O’Brien, chief of the Clothing and Textile Division of the Bureau of Home Economics, who directed three years of government research leading to the development of stylish cotton hosiery, said American mills are ready to manufacture 40 million dozen pair a year.

She said:

We are ready to shift over to the manufacture of cotton hosiery at once. More than 85% of the mills now manufacturing silk stockings can change immediately to cotton. There will be no shortage of stockings. And they’ll be good looking, too.

There will be cotton stockings on the market by the time present limited stocks of silk hosiery is exhausted, government officials said. The shift was made necessary by OPM orders closing silk mills to conserve supplies for Army parachutes and powder bags.

‘All ready now’

Rep. Cannon sponsored $90,000 in appropriations for research into manufacturing cotton hosiery.

Ther Congressmen, whose constituents don’t grow cotton, said:

I’m interested in the farmer and, of course, the consumer. We saw the possibility of this a long time ago. Now we are ready.

Four out of five pairs of hose will soon be made of cotton, Miss O’Brien estimated. About 20% of the stockings now manufactured are rayon and a few are nylon. But those materials are limited because of defense needs.

David Young, a home economics style expert, has developed more than 150 styles and patterns of full-fashioned cotton hose ranging from cobweb mesh for evening wear to plain knits for sports and garden wear. There are “tweeds” for golf and “fishnet” for formal occasions.

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The Pittsburgh Press (August 4, 1941)

Hosiery counters swamped –
LEGS PENALIZED FOR ARMS – WOMEN GIVE REBEL YELL

Like the run in an old stocking, sales in silk hosiery continued unabated here today.

Despite pleas from government circles in Washington to refrain from “hoarding” hosiery, hundreds of women stormed the downtown department stores as soon as the doors opened at 9 a.m. and officials said the rush was “worse than ever now.”

The runs for silk stockings started during the weekend after the federal government ordered all stocks of raw silk diverted to national defense use and intimated manufacture of silk hosiery would have to halt.

So heavy was the stampede that the strict rationing instituted Saturday, limiting each customer to six pairs of stockings, was reduced even further by some stores to three pairs each today.

And most of the stores, meanwhile, discontinued all telephone orders for stockings. Customers went to the store counters through aisles which were packed five-deep even in mid-afternoon.

Government sources said the supply of stockings now on hand was sufficient to meet all normal demands for the next six to 12 months, but merchants warned that the wave of hysterical buying – first consumer rush since the outbreak of the current war – would exhaust present supplies “in a few days” unless it ends immediately.

Sales clerks were swamped by women purchasers in the downtown stores as soon as the doors were opened this morning.

Although there were no waiting lines, in some cases women strolled along the sidewalks waiting for the stores to open anf then barged in to “stock up.”

Meanwhile, as the stampede continued also in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and all points east and west, Harriet Elliott, head of the consumers division of the Office of Production Management, called on women to cease their “selfish raids” on the nation’s silk-stocking supply and resort to “fair play” so that other consumers who buy hosiery from week to week on current earnings would not be deprived of sharing the stock.

To conserve the supply, Miss Elliott outlined four rules for women to give their stockings “longer life” – asking them to wash stockings immediately after taking them off in lukewarm suds, to dry them in a shade and to “stop” runs by plugging both ends with run-stopper or colorless nail polish.

Miss Elliott also warned women against paying higher prices than normally for the stockings, something which she said “self-seeking merchants” might resort to in order to take advantage of the huge demand.

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SHORTAGES EXIST IN OTHER YARNS
Bty the United Press

The magnitude of the silk crisis became increasingly apparent today.

The National Association of Hosiery Manufacturers disclosed that 21,291,486 dozen pairs of women’s hose were shipped during the first half of 1941, an increase in demand of 14.6% over last year.

Financial publications carried stories telling of yarn shortages, expected layoffs and search for substitutes.

The silk shortage was already extending its effect among other yarns and fibers. The order of the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply, setting aside 10% of each rayon producer’s output this month and next for the benefit of hosiery manufacturers, was expected to aggravate what was called:

…an already tight rayon yarn situation.

The nylon industry is making great efforts to fill part of the gap caused by the silk shortage, built during the first half of the year, it accounted for only 3,453,011 dozen pairs of the total hosiery shipments.

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The Pittsburgh Press (August 6, 1941)

SHEER COTTON HOSE CALLED SILK SOLUTION

Washington, Aug. 6 (UP) –
Web-like cotton stockings fine enough for evening wear are the government’s suggestion in answer to feminine America’s query “what will we wear when sheer silk hose are gone?”

More than 150 designs for all types of cotton stockings, from sports weights to sheer mesh and lace that can be worn with toeless evening shoes are ready and waiting for American hosiery manufacturers to copy in mass production.

Three years ago, Congress anticipated silk trouble because of international complications, and set the Department of Agriculture to work streamlining cotton hose. The new designs, evolved under direction of David H. Young, textile technologist, are pronounced far less likely to snag, wrinkle or fuzz than leg coverings of the last cotton-stocking era.

Some of the government’s designs are already available in shops, with more in prospect. It is estimated that 89% of the full-fashioned knitting machines in this country can knit cotton as well as silk while 47% can handle nylon.

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The Pittsburgh Press (August 7, 1941)

SILK REORGANIZATION PLAN SOUGHT TO KEEP MILLS GOING
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OPM outlines program to stabilize employment, production
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Washington, Aug. 7 (UP) –
The Office of Production Management last night announced details of a broad program designed to reestablish the silk industry, to maintain employment of silk workers and to assure the nation of an adequate supply of hosiery and other articles formerly made of silk.

The program was announced by OPM Associate Director Sidney Hillman, OPM Purchasing Director Donald M. Nelson and Director Leon Henderson of the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply.

A special joint commodity section on silk was established, headed by Lessing J. Rosenwald of Philadelphia, retired chairman of the board of Sears, Roebuck and Co.

Use of substitutes planned

The section will study methods of maintaining operations in the silk industry by the use of substitutes, conversion of hosiery and “throwing” capacity to the use of substitute fibers, and allocation of rayon yarn to the industry.

Representatives of labor, industry and government are to meet here tomorrow to work out methods of putting the industry on its feet.

The OPM last Friday took full control of all silk supplies in the United States and halted processing of civilian silk articles because of the break in Japanese-American economic relations which threatened the silk supply needed by the Army and Navy for parachutes and powder bags. Officials said the action would result in closing down of all factories not now at work on Army and Navy orders and would throw approximately 175,000 workers out of jobs.

Normal basis sought

The three defense officials said in a joint statement:

We are going to try to get the industry as nearly back to a normal basis as possible.

They advocated construction of additional nylon and rayon productive capacity and said that many mills could use long staple cotton “to advantage.”

They said:

We believe that in a great many hosiery mills it will be possible to shift over from the use of silk to the use of synthetic fibers without a halt in production. In many cases, it should be possible to resume operations in the not-too-distant future.

We are doing everything that can be done to keep unemployment at a minimum; to provide new jobs for workers who are displaced; to keep as many mills as possible in operation; and to provide for the consumer adequate supplies of hosiery and other commodities.

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The Pittsburgh Press (August 11, 1941)

SILK HOSIERY PRICE GOUGING DENOUNCED

Washington, Aug. 11 (UP) –
Harriet Elliott, associate price control administrator, charged today that some retail and wholesale dealers of hosiery and other silk products have “gouged the public” with unjustified price increases because of the silk shortage.

She said that while many dealers have:

…patriotically refrained from raising their prices, others are deliberately taking advantage of the situation to reap windfall profits.

All parts of the country have reported substantial increases in retail prices, retailers have reported higher wholesale prices, and wholesalers report increases in prices from manufacturers, she said.

She added:

In this way, unpatriotic self-interest is being pyraminded all along the line.

She said consumers should buy silk hose for current needs only and should “vigorously protest” and refuse to lay higher than normal prices. She pointed out that production of rayons, cottons and nylons suitable for hosiery use is being expanded.

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SILK STOCKING ‘CRISIS’ BUILDS GREAT YARN FOR GRANDMA
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Curly-headed darlings of future will learn how ladies rushed counters to preserve leg glamor
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By Maxine Garrison

Some 30 to 40 years from now, when the curly-headed little darlings of the future cluster around Grandma’s knee and pipe up in their high clear voices:

Granny, tell us about the Big Dearth of 1941. Tell us about it, Granny.

…Grandma will smile gently as she wipes her spectacles and begins to tell a story pretty much along these lines:

Gracious me, now how did you children ever hear about that? I didn’t think you modern youngsters even knew what silk stockings were. Why, it’s been years since anyone wore anything but these new-fangled gossamer things they say are woven out of scissors and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails.

But I remember. My, yes, that’s one time I could never forget, the week we thought we weren’t going to get any more silk stockings, the week of the Big Dearth.

I was 20 then, and working in an office in Pittsburgh. Everyone was pretty excited that year anyhow with the war in Europe and all, and at home a big defense program in full swing. The government had begun to order priorities for defense production in vital raw materials, so that we could meet the world crisis.

Along the first of August, the government said that all raw silk stocks were to be put aside for defense. Everybody’d been expecting something of the sort, but nobody expected what happened right away.

Before manufacturers could even go into a huddle, and while retailers were still perfectly confident that available stocks were sufficient to meet normal demands for at least six months, women all over the country went into a regular panic.

Yes, sir, overnight they got scared they wouldn’t be able to get any more silk stockings, that they’d have to go back to the cotton ones their grandmothers had worn. You children might wonder what the fuss was all about, but then you wouldn’t understand what store women set by their legs in those days. They wore short skirts, so their legs were in evidence all the time, and they took all sorts of exercises to make their gams – that was slang for legs – look pretty, and wore sheer silk and nylon for glamor’s sake.

Seems as if every woman in the country saw herself stripped of her glamor overnight, forced to dress like a bumpkin. They didn’t worry about anything but stockings, though. They didn’t bother planning to hoard anything else with silk in it. Legs were the thing.

No plague of locusts ever denuded a cornfield faster than the women stripped hosiery shelves. The announcement was made on Friday. Saturday the rush started, and by the end of the day it was so serious that stores were limiting sales to three or six pairs per customer.

You should have seen them in the stores! They stood six and eight deep around the counters, until it was impossible for traffic to keep moving. They snatched and grabbed at every stocking box in sight. Some of them dove right behind the counters, and started pulling out boxes themselves.

Salesgirls were working like crazy. Extras were called on, the sales forces were divided into shifts. Girls came in early or stayed late to write up the stocks of orders accumulated during the day.

At the beginning of the rush, before anyone realized what was happening, women who could afford it planned really big-time hoarding. One bought $300 worth of stockings in one swoop, another nabbed 612 pairs, another ordered 12 dozen pairs. These stories got around, of course, and the women who were having trouble finding even one pair became furious. I tried to get a couple Monday on my lunch hour, and couldn’t even get near a counter.

I heard some women discussing these big purchases, and one said:

Well, all I hope is that when they take those stockings out of the boxes a few months from now, they’ll all turn out to have lost their elasticity from lying around unused.

I heard about one department store that only the week before had been considered overstocked. A sale with a really worthwhile cut in price was offered, to get some of the stock off the shelves. Women showed only the faintest interest. But by Monday of the next week, there was hardly a pair left.

Such a time! Buyers were scurrying around all over the country, looking for new stocks, trying to make sure they’d get what was already ordered, trying to speed up deliveries. The question of substitutes came up. There was talk of all sorts of fancy and flattering cotton designs, but it turned out that most of them weren’t in production.

Leg makeup got a mention. Some favored all-over makeup, others suggested painting a seam down the backs of the legs. One store put a makeup demonstrator in the window. When I went by, the men were jammed clear out to the curb watching the girl with the pretty legs, but the women were rushing by without a sideward glance.

Eventually, of course, the smoke of battle cleared away, showing hosiery counters everywhere in a state of complete surrender. Shoppers and salesgirls alike were limp with fatigue.

Some women even began to wonder why they’d gotten so excited. When they thought it over calmly, it turned out that stockings might be nice, but they weren’t the most important thing in the world. And it dawned on a few isolated souls what a funny thing it was that the first time the national emergency even hinted at a slight personal sacrifice for women, patriotism went by the boards, and the only thought in any woman’s mind was how she could obtain enough silk stockings to keep her legs looking nicer longer than the woman next to her.

The Big Dearth of 1941 – it looks like such a little thing now! But you can be just as glad you weren’t alive then, children – you might have been trampled in the rush of women in a panic because they were threatened by the loss of not food or shelter or safety – but leg glamor.

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The Pittsburgh Press (August 14, 1941)

HAYWORTH URGES FAIR PLAY

A plea to 110 film actresses was issued today by Rita Hayworth not to horde silk stockings and underwear. She urged making purchases only a needed to give others who could not afford buying in large quantities a chance at the limited supply of silk garments. Eventually, she believes:

We’ll all have to wear cotton; I wore it once and can again.

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The Pittsburgh Press (August 15, 1941)

Henry McLemore’s viewpoint –
CHANGE IN HOSIERY STYLES WOULD GYP LOYAL HOARDERS
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All those stocking counter rushes will have been in vain if the colors are out-of-date
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By Henry McLemore

Screenshot (509)

Washington –
One of the most underhanded tricks that has been worked in this country since Benedict Arnold was doing his stuff has just come to light.

This bit of treachery was revealed in a statement by President Alexander McKeown of the CIO American Federation of Hosiery Workers.

Mr. McKeown said:

Advance fall and winter styles show stockings matching costumes, with solid color hose much the vague.

Greens, browns, and some vivid shades will be the thing. Women hoarders of silk stockings are buying beiges that will be as out-of-date as yesterday’s newspapers.

If Mr. McKeown has known all along that this was going to happen, he has pulled a pretty mean trick on the conscientious, hard-working, stocking-hoarding gals of this country.

In perfectly good faith they have gone out and risked their own well-being in a desperate effort to get hold of as many pairs of stockings as they could lay their pretty hands on.

Real warfare at counters

No one who has witnessed or participated in a recent department store stocking rich silk, question the dangers involved. Our brave lassies endured more than any draftee has since he was inducted into the Army.

I watched the Tennessee Army maneuvers and they were child’s play compared to the pitched battles that have been going on around stocking counters.

The Tennessee stuff was mock warfare. The girls put on the real thing. They clawed, they scratched, they pushed, they stepped on one another’s feet. They placed elbows firmly in one another’s eyes and trampled one another mercilessly.

It is to be hoped that the War Department was smart enough to place military observers near the stocking counters. The women used every type of modern warfare to reach a striking position at the beiges, suntans, and the naturals.

Pincer movements frequent

Big women simulated tanks and tore great gaps in the ranks of the lighter girls in front of them. Small, mobile units of women worked flank movements on the salesgirls, and struck from behind to gain their objective.

Many a woman had a pincer movement out on her as she was about to buy the last two pair of stockings available in her size.

The morale of the stocking army was magnificent.

There were no cowards anywhere.

There were no conscripts, either; every woman was a willing volunteer.

Their grim determination to buy or die as stirring.

May be in vain

Now it would seen that because of the foxy Mr. McKeown this splendid achievement in hoarding silk stockings may be in vain. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right that this great, concerted, patriotic effort by our American women should have to go by the boards.

I am going to do my best to keep the news of the red, the green, and the other vivid shades of hose that will be worn this fall from my wife.

She is still under an physician’s care from the banging around she gopt buying six pairs of beige two-thread, and frankly I don’t believe she is up to standing the shock of learning that her frantic hoarding will be to no avail.

One pair sealed in fruit jar

Those six pairs of stockings have become her most treasured possessions. Even in her weakened condition, she insists each day in making the rounds to where she has them hidden to see if they show any signs of disintegration.

She has one pair sealed in a fruit jar (someone told her that air would break down their delicate constitutions). There is another pair in a humidor from which she poured all my tobacco, and the other four pairs are wrapped in yards of Cellophane.

This is just one example of what hoarded silk stockings mean to the women of this country, and I foresee a near revolution when they all realize that Mr. McKeown has double-crossed them. Of course, Mr. McKeown isn’t going to get off scot free after his treachery – that is. of there is a Mrs. McKeown.

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Back then it was stockings now toilet paper. A very entertaining article. :slight_smile:

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The Pittsburgh Press (August 18, 1941)

SILK EMPLOYMENT DROPS

Washington, Aug. 18 –
A special survey of 338 silk hosiery mills by the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed today that employment declined from 113,785 to 109,584 during the week following the government order freezing all supplies of raw silk.

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The Pittsburgh Press (August 24, 1941)

AMERICA WITHOUT ITS SILK SEARCHES FOR SUBSTITUTES
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Science is now called upon to produce fabrics acceptable to nation’s women
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By Emily C. Davis, Science Service staff writer

America without silk stockinged legs will seem queer. But this is still a land of plenty – and a land of glamor.

Remember World War I, when dazed Americans found themselves cut off from German dyes? During a hard interlude, we wore clothes that cost sky-high war prices and that still shrank and faded when cleaned. And then came the dawn. America learned to make its own dyes – good ones, too.

The no-more-silk bombshell of 1941 is different, and more complex for adjusting. There is no one substitute for silk uses, and we Americans are not likely to get pay gold from silk culture, though may a state in the Union has tried it. In fact, one reason why Jamestown Colony was founded in Virginia back in 1607 was King James’ idea that mulberry for feeding silkworms grew well there. By 1623, the King was ordering Virginia planters to produce a crop of silk or be fined. A little more than 100 years ago, the United States had a silk raising speculative boom. It crashed in 1840.

Little financial return

Explaining why America has never become a silk growing country, a silk company once stated that:

It takes infinite patience and an altogether disproportionate amount of human labor.

In Italy, in silkworm season, the statement continued, every room in the house, including bedrooms and beds, is given over to the worms, which women must tend from daybreak to after dark at a profit of a few cents a day.

The impressive fact about the new no-silk era is that we are not nearly so “lost” without silk as many Americans would have supposed. While we had abundant silk, we used it. But there was a great deal of experimenting with synthetics and preparedness for using other materials. It comes in handy now.

Army and Navy were ready

Take the Army and Navy, whose needs come first today. The Ordnance Department followed up the silk freezing news with its own announcement that it can dispense with a good deal of silk used in powder bags, in which silk used to be vital fighting goods. Since 1934, it develops, the Army has experimented with cotton cloth for holding the powder that is loaded no gun breeches. Cotton was supposed to be dangerous for this use, because it would leave a smoldering fragment which might set off a premature explosion of it encountered a fresh charge loaded into the gun. The Army’s new cotton materials are consumed leaving an ash amounting to no more than two-tenths of 1%.

Parachutes remain the other leading silk need in American fighting gear today. It takes 70 yards of silk to make an air pilot’s chute and 150 yards for a chute to land a trooper with his equipment. The Navy alone figures on 800,000 yards of this silk for a year’s needs, but synthetic silk replacing some of it is satisfactory.

Parachute flares, released to light up a darkened area at night, still requires silk chites. Cotton has been pronounced too bulky.

The only silk that the Quartermaster Corps of the Army is using in its millions of clothing and equipment items for 1,500,000 men is the taffeta for flags. And at that, only the brilliant regimental colors, hand embroidered, are of silk.

To replace silk, first and foremost, the United States has abundant cotton, which many a country today would be happy to have.

Wool supplies are cautiously rated by some economists as likely to be sufficient.

The United States is also producing nylon – 10 times as much in 1940 as in 1939, and the promise of another jump when another plant goes into production.

Rayon, tremendously important in our clothing and household supplies, has never competed importantly with silk in the United States hosiery trade. Using rayon staple, Canada is making a kind of hose described as more elastic and otherwise more satisfactory. United States manufacturers are reported interested.

Textiles from fish and milk

As dark horses of the laboratory there may appear new synthetics, Japan and Germany have experimented with wool from fish. Wool from casein in milk is here. England has found a way to make textiles from seaweed. Soybean fabrics are a promising prospect. Some of the chemists in industry who had in progress experiments with improving rayon or contriving new synthetics put their research aside when nylon hit the market. Now, some of these projects may seem worth resuming.

But the cotton stocking is headed for the spotlight. For three years, the Department of Agriculture experimented with these stockings in the bright hope that women would take to them, thereby easing the cotton growers’ plight of having too much cotton.

Designs ready

At Beltsville, Maryland, where the department maintains a stocking experiment laboratory and hosiery mill, are displayed rows upon rows of women’s sample stockings, all cotton, all designed by the government for the aid and inspiration of hose manufacturers.

About 9 out of 10 of the knitting mills that turn out full-fashioned silk hose can knit these stockings. And the hosiery industry, which has made some use of the designs heretofore, though not spectacularly, is now taking them very seriously indeed.

To David Young, textile technologist who has been creating the government’s cotton stocking designs these three years, it was apparent from the start that cotton must have style of it was ever to arouse feminine America’s enthusiasm.

There are more than 100 of his designs available, ranging through four weights – heavy, medium, light, and chiffon. They include fine, high-twist lisle and cheaper, soft cotton. There are not only plan hose in conventional beige tones but also all sorts of novelties to make cotton interesting.

In fairness to these new stockings, it is better not to compare them to silk, but to regard them as a new line of leg wear. They are a long, long way from the cotton hose that grandma used to wear. Even her open-work best pair would look clumsy in comparison.

The new cotton hose include meshes and rib designs for sport and everyday, and sheer webs and fishnets for evening. Some of Mr. Young’s designs have gay mesh toes of green or some other color on beige stockings for the toeless shoe fashion. Some have dainty embroidery curving around instep or ankle as a 1941 variation of the once-popular clocks. With brown tones predominating in Mr. Young’s collection, the array nevertheless includes rainbow tints, and tweed-like mixtures, for sport or whims of fashion.

Sturdy and stylish

Besides making cotton hose for style, the hosiery laboratory staff has worked hard to make them sturdy. Test stockings have been pulled over dummy legs and rubbed back and forth at heel and toe and other spots, in order to study ability of the hose to stand abrasion. Stockings were out in other machines that stretched and relaxed them repeatedly to test elasticity and to see how well the hose would resist running or bursting.

A laboratory chemist tested the cotton hose for fastness to light, and today government home economists are emphasizing that, if cotton stockings are to make good, they must be manufactured with vat dyes that will keep their color. Laundering of colored cotton hose, they explain, requires the same routine of lukewarm suds that silk stockings get. At the laboratory, a laundry-o-meter put the test hosiery through many washings, each stocking being washed separately in a mason jar. For testing snag resistance, the laboratory workers had to rig up their own invention.

15

U.S. WILL PURCHASE RAW SILK STOCKS

Washington, Aug. 23 (UP) –
Federal Loan Administrator Jesse H. Jones said today that the Defense Supplies Corp. and made arrangements for purchasing raw silk stocks in this country.

The purchase program was designed to afford a market for raw silk which was frozen by the Office of Production Management shortly after this country froze all Japanese assets and led to a virtual cessation of trade with the world’s principal source of silk, Japan.

Beginning Monday, Mr. Jones said purchase of raw silk will be made to the New York office of the Defense Supplies Corp. and will be limited to raw silk in original bales.

16

The Pittsburgh Press (August 28, 1941)

CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
…
Hose rationed by need, not ability to buy
…
By Maxine Garrison

It was strange, in the first place, to read about a stocking ban in Japan. I had somehow got the notion that we were the ones who were having trouble about stockings, and thought that if anybody would be overstocked under present conditions, it would be Japan.

But leaving these complicated matters to more business-like minds than mine, I still think the Japanese stocking ban had a strange ring to it.

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It has been decreed that women of the “leisure class” may no longer purchase stockings. Preference is given to women outdoor workers, especially bus and streetcar conductors, and school teachers.

The explanation given was that woman of no special occupation have no need for stockings and not only can but must do without them on the new stringent ration list.

The wire story added that the ban really won’t make a great deal of difference, as most Japanese women rarely wear stockings anyhow, but stick to high cloth shoes and long petticoats.

Even so, it seems extremely odd to hear of rationing based on the principle of actual need. I suppose that if you wanted to, you could make out a good case for its being undemocratic – that is, if your idea of democracy consists chiefly of:

First come, first served.

No distinction here

No such distinction was made during the run on silk stockings witnesses in these parts a few weeks ago. No, sirree. Just because the leisure classes don’t do as much walking as the working goils, they weren’t discriminated against; It was all a strictly cash-on-the-line proposition.

One movie star is reported to have purchased 500 dozen pairs of hose in a panic lest her beauteous gams be disfigured by some substitute. Locally, women who couldn’t afford drain on the bank account purchased as many as 30 and 40 dozen pairs.

Eventually, purchases were limited to three and six pairs to a customer, but this was merely a check on falling stocks. It really wasn’t meant to keep one woman from having more than her neighbor.

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Silk stockings have always been a major item in any working girl’s budget, definitely the major item in her clothes budget. She is not considered properly dressed unless she wears them, and cotton stocking would cause a lowering of her prestige in most places of employment, unless everyone else was wearing them, too. It’s silly, but there it is.

No wear or tear

The woman with leisure, and especially the woman with both leisure and money, put little actual wear on their stockings. They go out of the house for only short periods, and then do only a fraction of the walking their working sisters do. They ride wherever it is all possible, sit in heavily upholstered furniture far removed from the snag hazards of office furnishing the rest of the time.

But they are the ones who have, they think, enough hose to last them through any shortage. The career girl who had to think it over before deciding to spend the money for two pairs to “hoard” got to the counter entirely too late.

It is interesting to think of restriction according to need instead of ability to buy before the supply runs out.

17

The Pittsburgh Press (September 3, 1941)

We, the women –
SILK ‘SCARE’ SHOWS WOMEN DON’T DRESS TO PLEASE MEN
…
Rush to get stockings laughed at by males but the girls were determined
…
By Ruth Millett

The behavior of women toward the silk stocking shortage is fresh evidence that women don’t dress to please men, but to please themselves.

It has always been conceded that the reason women, rich and poor alike, just “had to have” silk stockings was because men liked to see feminine legs in sheer silk hosiery.

But now the props have been knocked out of that old theory. When Uncle Sam said:

No more silk stockings when the present supply is exhausted.

…the men took the matter calmly. They even looked down their noses at the women who went around wailing:

What’ll I do?

And as for the ones who chased down to department stores to push and fight for the right to lay in a supply of the suddenly precious silk stockings – the men just snickered at them. They said:

A bunch of scatterbrains!

If women had been interested in the masculine viewpoint of clothes, right then and there they would have stopped worrying over a future without the glamorizing effect of silk on their slender, fat or medium legs.

If the men didn’t care, then what had they to worry about?

But that wasn’t the way it was. The women just looked at the men as though they were impossibly stupid and said:

Naturally, you don’t understand.

And went right on worrying about the silk stocking situation.

So wives have not been wrecking the family budget and shopgirls haven’t been eating 15¢ lunches in order to buy silk stockings just to make themselves attractive to men.

They’ve worn silk stockings all these years at no matter what the sacrifice because they liked silk stockings. So we can add that bit of negative evidence to the old, old question:

Do women dress to please men?

18

The Pittsburgh Press (September 7, 1941)

25,000 LOSE SILK JOBS

Washington, Sept. 6 –
Associate OPM Director General Sidney Hillman said today that the stoppage of silk imports and the difficulty in obtaining substitute yarns has made 25,000 workers idle. This is 14% of the silk industry’s total labor force.

19

The Pittsburgh Press (September 18, 1941)

Japs losing never-fought war –
NYLON THREATENS TO FINISH U.S. SILK TRADE WITH TOKYO
…
Outlook is dreary for Japan with loss of business for her most valuable report
…
By John W. Love, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Washington, Sept. 18 –
In nylon, toughest of all the sheer fibers, the Japanese are discovering they have an enemy more terrible than battleships.

Some observers here suspect that Japan has already lost a never-fought war; and lost it to a fruit of American laboratory research.

By next spring or summer, before all the silk stockings some women recently bought have been worn out, the nylon production of this country will be sufficient to clothe all the feminine legs. From there on, silk won’t be needed.

This is provided that the duPonts can get phenol for the nylon process in their new plant nearing completion at Martinsville, in southwestern Virginia. Phenol is wanted for explosives and priorities may reserve the supply.

Even so, the long-dwindling silk business of the Japanese with this country seems doomed eventually to be pinched off by nylon and such other synthetics as vinyon.

In the 15 months from the time nylon came on the market until the silk stocks in this country were frozen, it moved up to where it was being used for making one-fifth of the full fashioned hose in the United States. At that point, the duPonts were induced to permit other materials, such as rayon, to be employed by their customers for the welts or tops, and the heels and toes, thus to make the same poundage of nylon go twice as far.

Nylon wears longer

All the nylon produced to date has come from the plant erected in 1939 at Seaford, Del. The Martinsville plant, with the same annual capacity of 8 million pounds, is to be finished next summer but in production before then, the two mills together to be employing 2,000 persons.

The 16 million pounds of nylon would not provide as many pairs of hose as American women have been buying of silk, but because its yarns are now used in association with rayon, for feet and tops, and because of its longer-wearing qualities, it would take care of all the hosiery needed and leave something over for other products.

For Japan, the outlook in silk is indeed dreary. Silk was her most valuable article of export, America was taking practically all of it in the last year or two, and 90% of what we took was going into hosiery. Rayon had steadily eaten into the other uses of silk and now the inorganic synthetics come along to take over its last field, thus perhaps to close silk’s international trade cycle of 2,000 years. No wonder, say the experts, that Hirohito took over!

20

The Pittsburgh Press (October 20, 1941)

Silk stocking crisis cited in divorce suit

The first divorce suit based on the threatened shortage of silk shortages bobbed up in court today.

Mrs. Elizabeth Loucks, of Freeport Rd., asked a divorce from Roger W. Loucks charging he threw his cigarette ashes at her stockings in the hope of starting runners.

Another kind of run she claimed he started was a run on the host’s refrigerator when they went visiting. She said he would grab a handful of food and loudly proclaim that she didn’t feed him well enough.

Judge Harry H. Rowand reserved decision.