Figure 1.--While boys in urban areas mostly wore knee pants. This was not the case in rural areas. Some of the younger boys wore knee pants, but in many rural areas boys mostly wore long pants. Here we see boys at the Mount Thorp School in Washington during 1902. All the boys wore long opants except for the youngest boys who wire a knee pants outfit. Put your cursor on the image to see the rest of the boys.

While knee pants dominated boyswear in the cities, rural areas were more varied. Here the younger boys might wear knee pants, but not the older boys and in some areas not even the younger boys. This can be folloed in some detail through school photography. It was mail order catalogs in the 19th century brought fashion to the frontier and rural areas, but there were still real differences between how people in rural areas and urban areas dressed. This was especially the case for men and boys. Women and girls seemed more atuned to fashion and perhaps less involved in hard outdoor work and chores. A good example of this is the Mount Thorp School in 1902. Notice that this was not a farming area, but more of a logging area. The image is a little unclear, but as far as we can tell all the boys here are wearing long pants except for the youngest boy. And only one boy wears overalls. We do not see mny overalls in farming areas until late in the decade, about 1908. We are not sure when fsrmrs began wearing overalls, but boys in farming sreas do not seem to be commonly wearing them until late in the decade. We see overalls earlier, but mostly we see them in factory and Western mining areas. Logging areas may also be another exception. This was in sharp contrast to urban areas where knee pants were the standard dress.

Created: 6:02 PM 10/22/2018
Last updated: 6:02 PM 10/22/2018