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American children wearing long stockings usually wore some kind of stocking supporter to hold them up. This included boys wearing knickers. Knicker closures were usually not tight enough to hold stockings in place without some sort of gartering. Knickers were closed either with a strap and buckle or with knitted cuffs, and neither kind of closure would be sufficient to keep stockings from slipping down the leg. Stocking supporters would be the surest way of keeping long stockings up, but some boys undoubtedly preferred rounds of elastic worn around the leg. There is no way of knowing which method would be used, but I suspect that almost all boys, even in their teens, wore supporters when the knickers closed above the knee. And we have some evidence of this from HBC photos already on file--images where the supporter clasps can actually be seen or reasonably inferred. The evidence is harder to come by later on (in the 1930s) when knickers started being born below the knee. My guess is that boys up to about 12 or 13 might still wear supporters but that boys from fourteen onwards would used elastic rounds like those worn with knee socks in England.
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