Memory Monday: Food and Clothing Part 2

My Great-Great Grandfather

FOOD AND CLOTHING PART 2

Last week, I shared what a man would eat in sixty years according to the magazine Facts for Farmers, also the Family Circle from 1865. The picture above is my great-great grandfather. He was born in 1801 and died in 1881, so he would have eaten a bit more food that was listed last week. Today, I am sharing—from the same article—how much fabric it would take to cloth the same gentleman back then. When you think about what we wear today—lots of tees, shorts, and jeans, it seems almost impossible for one person to use that much fabric for his or her clothes even in sixty years. Here is the second part of that article:

We estimate that a full-dressed man carries about fifty yards of cloth upon his body, or at least it has taken so many square yards of Cloth to make the following garments:

one under and one over shirt and drawers, eight yards; vest, with all its inside and out, four yards; coat, overcoat, and cloak, 32 yards; the handkerchiefs in the coat and cloak pockets, two yards; pants, lined, four yards.

Then we may add a night-shirt, four yards, and morning wrapper, 10 yards, and we have 64 yards for a single suit. Allow six of these suits a year—of some garments he will want more, and some less than six, but take that as an average, and we have 384 yards for the gentleman's wardrobe one year. Multiply that by sixty years, and two have 23,040 yards of cloth, which appears a fair allowance, as we throw out the ten years of childhood.

With these garments be will want each year two pair of boots, two pair of shoes, two pair of slippers, two pair of rubbers or overshoes-480 pairs. With these he will wear sixty dozen pairs of stockings and (four hats a year) 240 hats.

I will say nothing about the yards of cloth that he will want about his toilet and table, his carpets and curtains, and his bed, with its daily change of bedding; but you can imagine it would make a large spread. The great question for consideration, in an agricultural point of view, is this: Could such a consumer of earth's products produce as much as he consumed, with all industry applied during life, or would he be dependent upon the labor of others?

I don’t know about you, but I’ll stick to the tees, jeans, crocs, and an occasional jacket. What about you?