home Government Information, Resources and Services A Government Document explores the history of that summer staple, the swim suit!

A Government Document explores the history of that summer staple, the swim suit!

Summer officially arrived a couple of weekends ago, and with it the promise of many hot, sunny days — days just right for a nice dip in a cool body of water. As you gather up your swimming gear for a trip to your favorite secret swimming hole, backyard slip ‘n slide, or social distancing pool, we invite you to consider what that swimming kit would have looked like in years gone by with the help of a government document.

An MU Librarian in Jefferson City in 1969.

Published in 1969, Women’s Bathing and Swimming Costume in the United States is a paper from the Smithsonian Institution’s Bulletin series. In it, costume historian Claudia B. Kidwell traces the evolution of the bathing costume and, later, the swimming costume, starting in the late 18th century. At the same time, she sheds light on history of the sport itself.

In the late 1700s and into the 1850s, long linen or flannel bathing gowns were worn by bathers such as Martha Washington when they went for therapeutic plunges in mineral springs (p.6-7). These loose gowns resembled the chemise, an undergarment also worn at the time, but were usually in dark colors to better hide the figure. Some had weighted hems or were belted to keep them in place when entering the water (p.14-15).

Next, from the 1840s to 1870s, came the bifurcated bathing dress featuring pantaloons under a long overdress or combination of blouse and skirt made of woolen, linen or serge fabric. This style gave bathers more freedom to frolic in the waves on the seashore. Some of the ankle length drawers, or bloomers, featured suspenders, while others were belted. Straw bathing hats, a hooded bathing mantle or cloak, and manila or cork slippers completed the ensemble (p. 16-20).

A swim cap in 1942.

Starting in the 1880s and into the first quarter of the 20th century, the princess style bathing dress was to be found worn by beach-goers. A combination blouse and drawers with a removable skirt, this style allowed even more activity in the water. The skirt could be taken off while swimming, then modestly buttoned back to the waist when out of the water. Serge and mohair fabrics in dark blue and black were commonly used. Sleeves began to shorten during this time, and the use of knitted bathing tights instead of drawers or knickerbockers appeared in the 1890s. Waxed linen, oiled silk, or rubber bathing caps, sometimes covered by a bright turban, protected the hair (p.21-23).

By 1917, there were a two main options for bathing suits: a loose straight suit with no waistline worn with a belt or sash at the hips or the short-sleeved surplice suit with a skirt and bloomers. A third option, the knitted jersey suit, was reserved for expert swimmers (p.26-27). And with the growing popularity of swimming, such swimming suits all but replaced the prior bathing costumes in the 1920s (p.24).

Advertisement from the May 1923 issue of Vanity Fair.

The earliest swimming suits for women appeared in the 1880s; called “bathing jerseys”, they were form-fitting tunics that reached mid-thigh, featured high necks and cap sleeves, and were worn over trunks and stockings or tights (p.24). Knitted one-piece, skirtless swimsuits of the style typical for men were worn by pioneering women swimmers in the late 1900s and 1910s (p.26). By the 1920s, one- and two-piece knitted swimming suits were available; they were worn with stockings and satin or canvas slippers and accompanied by a beach cloak or wide-collared bathing wraps, colorful beach hats, and parasols (p.28). Necklines and armholes grew lower as the decade progressed and by the 1930s, when having a sun tan became popular, “swimming suits covered less of the bather” (p.30).

An MU Librarian’s grandparents on their honeymoon in Mexico in 1946.

In the 30s, colorful suits featuring novelty effects were produced as swimsuits became stylish as well as functional. The introduction of man-made fabrics and elastic yarn were important innovations in the emerging swim suit industry. The 1940s saw the first bikini arrive in the U.S. from France, while in the 1950s swim suits were designed to sculpt and control the figure with the help of the skillful use of fabrics and plastic boning (p.31-32).

As shown in this highlight of Ms. Kidwell’s interesting look at the history of swimwear, the bathing and swimming costumes worn by our ancestors mirrored the changing social acceptability of swimming over the years. So as you put on your goggles this weekend, give a thought to those who used to swim swathed in yards of fabric or in itchy wool suits!

An MU Librarian’s grandfather in the mid 1930s.
At the beach in 1935!
An MU Librarian’s grandmother at the pool in Kansas City in the late 1940s.
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Lindsay Yungbluth

Lindsay Yungbluth is a Library Information Specialist at Ellis Library where she works in Government Documents.

home Government Information, Resources and Services, Staff news Spotlight: Prices and Wages Guide Illuminates a 1920 Cartoon

Spotlight: Prices and Wages Guide Illuminates a 1920 Cartoon

Boy tells girl “Jes’ you wait, Susie—I got six seventy-one saved up. Soon as I get nineteen dollars I’m gonna git me seventeen white collars and a swell suit; then I’m gonna git a job as office boy in a bank and git a four thousand dollar bonus an’ buy you that there Soudan.”

The caption, above, to this cute 1920 cartoon from Cartoons magazine (vol.17 no.3), provides a unique opportunity to showcase our Prices and Wages by Decade research guide. The guide, which helps researchers locate primary sources showing historic retail prices and average wages, links mainly to government reports, but also includes catalogs and newspapers when relevant.

This ambitious young man mentions a number of figures that we could take a closer look at with the help of Prices and Wages: the prices of a swell suit and white collars, wages of office boys, and price of a sedan in 1920. To start checking his numbers, let’s head to the 1920s page of the guide.

First, for suits and collars, the 1920 Montgomery Ward catalog link found under the Merchandise tab of the Prices section sounds promising. Sure enough, the index tells us that ‘collars’ can be found on page 388 and ‘youths suits’ on pages 320 to 322. There are plenty of both collars and fine suits for our young hero to choose from!

Image Source: Montgomery Ward Catalog No. 93, 1920.

Next we move over to the Wages section to see what we can find for office boy earnings. The link for teenagers’ wages in Detroit, 1922 may be a good place to start. It takes us to the publication Occupations of junior workers in Detroit, which shows the 1922 pay of office boys as $6, $12, or $25 per week depending on hours worked per week (p.22). An entry from the 1921 Official Publication of the Central Trades and Labor Council of Greater New York and Vicinity shows another figure: “As office boy…His compensation is at the rate of $300 per year, and he is paid $25 monthly” (p.47).

Image source: 1920 Official handbook of automobiles.

Finally, the big ticket item—the sedan. Back on the Prices side, there is a Travel and Transportation tab containing a link for car prices for 1920-1924 in annual editions of the Handbook of AutomobilesSelecting the 1920 edition, we are taken to a digital copy at the HathiTrust digital library; from here we can either browse by our favorite automaker or search for the word “sedan” using the ‘Search in this text’ tool located at the top right-hand corner of the reading pane to find price listings. Some sedans are indeed priced around $4000 or higher.

What do you think, was our young friend accurate with his financial planning?

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Lindsay Yungbluth

Lindsay Yungbluth is a Library Information Specialist at Ellis Library where she works in Government Documents.

home Government Information Interesting Marital Statistics for Valentine’s Day

Interesting Marital Statistics for Valentine’s Day

Nestled in the the many pages of the Missouri Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 35th Annual Report for the 1912-1913 fiscal year is an entry that is quite fitting for Valentine’s Day. Under the headline “Women younger than men,” Interesting Marital Statistics is filled with data on the marital statuses of the the population of Missouri:

“Of the 3,293,335 inhabitants of Missouri, 1,687,813 are male and 1,605,522 female, which means that there are 105.1 male to every 100 of the other sex.

In scarcity women have the best of it from the cradle to the grave, the men outnumbering them at every age and social stage, there not being enough to go around if every male, regardless of age, took unto himself a wife. As the age of matrimony approaches, Missouri population statistics show, females become more scarce, until single males from 15 to 45 years and over finally outnumber the other sex 141 to each 100.

With the male population at 1,687,813, a total of 1,171,394 are from 15 to 45 years old and over, leaving 519,419 who are under 15 years. Of the males over 15 years, 56.9 per cent, or 665,938, are married; 37.2 per cent, or 435,219, single and on the available list; 56,518 whose wives have died; 7,020 who are divorced and 6,699 who, for some reason, would not give their marital condition.

Only 2,982 of Missouri’s army of 1,099,015 maids and matrons over 15 years old refused to give information covering their marital condition. Those married number 550,819, or 60.1 per cent of the female population considered here. The single ones count up 308,184, or 28 per cent; of divorces there are 8,558 and of widows, 118,472.”

Oh, the timeless tale of the “selection of a soul mate.”

Want to know more? Current data on marriage rates in Missouri can be found in the Vital Statistics reports of the Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services, available for download on their website. Historic editions of Missouri Vital Statistics from the 1960s to the 2000s are available from the University of Missouri’s Economic and Policy Analysis Research Center.

Lindsay Yungbluth

Lindsay Yungbluth is a Library Information Specialist at Ellis Library where she works in Government Documents.

home Government Information Forbidden Fashions of the Nineteen Forties

Forbidden Fashions of the Nineteen Forties

This week is New York Fashion Week, a grand tradition in the world of fashion that can trace its roots, interestingly enough, to World War II. Started in 1943 as “Press Week,”, the goal of the event was to “boost American fashion during the occupation of France” (Fashion Week Online, History of Fashion Week).

And American fashion may have needed such a boost—at the time, the industry was operating under production restrictions established to save material for the war effort. Of these restrictions, the War Production Board’s cloth-conserving Limitation Order L-85 received the most attention.

7 Federal Register 2722. April 10, 1942.

As stated in a WPB press release dated April 8, 1942, Order L-85 proposed to “make possible the production of at least 15 per cent more garments out of the same yardage of cloth” by curbing extremes in dress style such as “long, full skirts and sleeves that would waste missions of yards of material.” It established maximum lengths and sweeps (circumference of the bottom hem) for coats, dresses, suits, jackets, and skirts that apparel manufactures had to adhere to. It also eliminated the use of fabric-heavy elements such as French cuffs, balloon sleeves, and patch pockets, prohibited the sale of ensembles of more than two pieces for one price, and more.

Room for creativity and self-expression was also addressed in the press release: “The order does not mean the standardization of women’s clothes. Within the limitations fixed in the order, fashion designers, dress manufactures, and housewives are free to use their ingenuity in creating whatever fashions may strike their fancy.”

In adapting to these limitations, the fashion industry put their ingenuity to good use. According to the February 1, 1943 issue of Vogue, “No law compels us to wear clothes as narrow as these. L-85 allows much more generous measurements. Of our own free will, we’re wearing them. Voluntarily, a group of American designers have pledged themselves to use less fabric than L-85 allows—in order to save every yard. For the more fabric saved today—the less chance of shoe-string rations tomorrow.”

The article Hemline of Battle from the April 18, 1942 issue of Business Week summed it up by saying that Order L-85 limited “the amount of yardage that may henceforth go into milady’s gown,” causing a “shortening of hemlines and narrowing of silhouettes.”

And there you have it, a glimpse of the American fashion situation at the birth of New York Fashion Week. Hopefully this historic context will further your appreciation of the collections today’s talented designers will present over the next few days.

Images from Sears, Roebuck and Co. Spring and Summer 1941 and Fall and Winter 1941-1942 Catalogs

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Lindsay Yungbluth

Lindsay Yungbluth is a Library Information Specialist at Ellis Library where she works in Government Documents.

home Government Information The U.S. Tax Code as Used by a Stock Market Expert

The U.S. Tax Code as Used by a Stock Market Expert

While leafing through the pages of the Wall Street Journal this holiday break, the obituary of Robert N. Gordon caught our eye. The article, with the fascinating headline “College dropout made name as tax maven,” gives insight into Mr. Gordon’s success:

“Mr. Gordon, who was founder and president of New York-based Twenty-First Securities Corp. and whose bedtime reading included the tax code,…would exploit inefficiencies or errors or inconsistencies in the tax code wherever he found them.”

Impressive bedtime reading, but it served him well.

Want to follow in the tax maven’s footsteps? The United States Code can be found on the Reference Shelves in our Government Documents collection or online via the U.S. Government Printing Office’s website govinfo.com; Mr. Gordon’s book, “Wall Street secrets for tax-efficient investing,” is also available here at Ellis Library.

Lindsay Yungbluth

Lindsay Yungbluth is a Library Information Specialist at Ellis Library where she works in Government Documents.

home Government Information Mizzou Homecoming Goes to Washington

Mizzou Homecoming Goes to Washington

With the whole campus community excitedly gearing up for the 108th Homecoming, Ellis Library’s Government Documents department decided to bring their own unique spin to the preparations. Certainly, with such with a long and glorious tradition, the University of Missouri’s Homecoming celebrations can be found in Federal Government publications, we thought, Let’s find out!

With the help of the Government Publishing Office’s terrific database govinfo, we found three Congressional Record entries that mention Mizzou’s Homecoming.

The first dates from October 18, 2000, when Senator Kit Bond addressed the Senate to acknowledge the recent death of Governor Mel Carnahan:

“I was with him on Saturday at the homecoming for the University of Missouri. We shared a common interest on that day; our football team didn’t do well. But Mel Carnahan, with a ready smile and a lovely wife, was there. We enjoyed our time together as we appreciated and looked back on the tremendous accomplishments he had and the contributions he made to the State of Missouri.”

Congressional Record Volume 157, Issue 154 (October 14, 2011). Source: govinfo.gov.

We continue on a happier note with two entries recognizing the 100th anniversary of MU’s Homecoming. On October 13, 2011, Blaine Luetkemeyer rose to congratulate MU on the landmark celebration (see insert to the left). Russ Carnahan did the same the following day on October 14. “The tradition of ‘homecoming’ at the University of Missouri,” Carnahan said, “served as a model for homecoming celebrations across the country.” He continues, saying:

“Each year, thousands of students and alumni come home to celebrate one of the university’s greatest traditions. Homecoming at Mizzou has gone beyond school pride and football. Through this event, Mizzou has broken the world record for the largest peacetime blood drive on a college campus, and has organized other large community service events. Moreover, the University of Missouri’s homecoming celebration was recently named the best homecoming in the Nation.”

It is good to be a Tiger; here’s to another great Homecoming, Mizzou!

 

 

 

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Lindsay Yungbluth

Lindsay Yungbluth is a Library Information Specialist at Ellis Library where she works in Government Documents.

home Databases & Electronic Resources, Government Information State Documents Detail Missouri Beer Production and Consumption from the 1930s to the 1970s

State Documents Detail Missouri Beer Production and Consumption from the 1930s to the 1970s

While their covers and titles can be on the generic side, annual reports of State Agencies are filled with interesting information that can be hard to find anywhere else. A great example of this is the Annual Report of the Department of Liquor Control of the State of Missouri, which has chronicled the production and consumption of alcohol in the Show-Me State for four decades.

The Missouri Department of Liquor Control was established in 1934 with two major functions, the collection of revenue and law enforcement. As such, their annual reports are filled with statistical tables detailing how much beer, wine and liquor was produced in and shipped out of Missouri each year, per capita consumption, types of violations charged and more.

The links below contain samples of some of these fascinating tables from 1938 to 1968, including how many millions of gallons of liquor, beer and wine were consumed per year:

If this just wets your whistle and you want to learn more, visit Government Documents in Ellis Library.

Lindsay Yungbluth

Lindsay Yungbluth is a Library Information Specialist at Ellis Library where she works in Government Documents.

home Government Information, Resources and Services Take a Look at the Fashions of the First Ladies with Government Documents

Take a Look at the Fashions of the First Ladies with Government Documents

With the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s annual fashion exhibition coming up next week (accompanied, of course, by the opening celebration Gala on Monday), May means fashion. To add to this month’s conversation on fashion and its place in society, we are excited to showcase the delightful government publication The Dresses of the First Ladies of the White House by Margaret Brown Klapthor.

Published in 1952 by the Smithsonian Institution, this book contains images of dresses worn by First Ladies, from Martha Dandridge Curtis Washington to Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, lovingly displayed on a plaster figure with the appropriate accessories, coiffure and posture of the woman who wore them.

Detailed descriptions of each dress, as well as a portrait and brief biographical sketch of each woman, are also included. The gowns, which belong to a collection of the United States National Museum, “represent the changes in fashions in this country from the administration of President George Washington through the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt” as Klapthor says in her introduction.

Klapthor authored two supplements to this title, The Gown of Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1958) and The Gown of Mrs. John F. Kennedy (1963), to extend her survey of fashion through the Kennedy administration.

To view the gown of your favorite First Lady, visit the Government Information department at Ellis Library.

 

All images from Dresses of the First Ladies of the White House, by Margaret B. Klapthor, 1952.

home Government Information Historic climatological publications available from the National Centers for Environmental Information

Historic climatological publications available from the National Centers for Environmental Information

This winter has certainly been one for the history books when it comes to weather—it is a rare event indeed for Chicago to be colder than the North Pole! Weather data is fascinating, but knowing where to go to find historical data can be tricky.

Luckily, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information exists to preserve and provide public access to the Nation’s weather data and information! Their site has an impressive digital archive of historical climatological data publications, with access to series such as Climatological Data, Storm Data, Hourly Precipitation Data, Monthly Climatic Data for the World, Local Climatological Data, and more.

The Weather Bureau’s Climatological Data series, for example, is a monthly publication with an annual edition as well. The monthly issues contain tables of daily maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation amounts at over 8000 weather stations all across the nation, while the annual gives an overview of the year, including temperature extremes and freeze data. They are issued by state, and date all the way back to 1884!

These could be used to find out what the weather was like a hundred years ago today, on days of historical significance, on the day you were born, or more. Most fascinating, don’t you think?

 

 

 

home Government Information, Resources and Services Government Information takes you behind the scenes of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Government Information takes you behind the scenes of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

The 2019 Oscar nominations get one thinking of all the great films that came out in 2018. What were some of your favorites? Academy Award-winning director Morgan Neville’s documentary about Mister Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, certainly garnered a great deal of acclaim! It also gives us an opportunity to make use of historic U.S. government publications.

One important scene in the film shows Fred Rogers speaking before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications; the date is May 1, 1969 and the committee is in hearings on a bill that would authorize the appropriation of $20 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the 1970 fiscal year. Mister Rogers gives a powerful testimony that can be read in full in the published hearing Extension of Authorizations Under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which the University Libraries have access to through our online database subscriptions.

An excerpt from Fred Rogers’ statement in Extension of Authorizations Under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967

The film, which played locally in 2018 at both Ragtag Cinema and True/False Film Fest, is available at the Columbia Public Library if you are interested in watching it.

And if you want to find out if more of your favorite personalities have made appearances before Congress, visit the Government Information department at Ellis Library.

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Lindsay Yungbluth

Lindsay Yungbluth is a Library Information Specialist at Ellis Library where she works in Government Documents.