Figure 1.--Almost all American boys wore knee pants to school in the 1900s dcade. This was a trend that began in the mid-19th century. Knee pants were virtually universal in the 1890s abd 1900s except in rural areas where long pants were more common than in urban areas. Many school portraits in the 1900s show all the boys wearing knee pants. They were even common with teenagers, except for the very oldest. This only began to change at the end of the decade. Here we see a youngerbboy with three girls nwrearing dresses. One is his sister. Notice the different hair parts. The school here is unidentifed, but click on the image to see the class.

Almost all American boys wore knee pants to school in the 1900s dcade. This was a trend that began in the mid-19th century. Knee pants were virtually universal in the 1890s abd 1900s except in rural areas where long pants were more common than in urban areas. Many school portraits in the 1900s show all the boys wearing knee pants. They were even common with teenagers, except for the very oldest. This only began to change at the end of the decade. For some reason about 1908 we begin to see boys beginning to ewear earing knickers. Knickers suddenly became very popular. We see them in Britain during the late-19th century, but not very commonly in America. This change occurred very rapidly. ASnd we are not sure why. Some of the younger boys coninued to wear straight-leg knee pants. Most boys by 1910, however were wearing knickers. n exceotion was in rural areas abiut the smae time we begin to see a substantial number of boysd bginning to newrar overalls. Afain we have no idea why. Boys not wearing blouses or button-on clothes, commonly wore suspenders to hold up their pants. Belts were not yet very common. Bib-overalls were commonly worn by workers and we think farmers, although we are not positive about farmers. We do not see boys in rural areas wearing overalls. We rarely see them in school portraits until the end of the 1900s. Suddenly about 1908 we begin to see overalls in rural schools. This was about the sanme time tht knickers aopopeared in city schools. We only see overalls at the time in rural schools and they became virtually synomamous with hillbillies. We have no idea why this developed occured so suddenly or at the time.

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Created: 12:54 AM 1/31/2022
Last updated: 12:54 AM 1/31/2022