Menasha Wooden Ware workers pose outside the factory in 1895. An industrious, rough looking lot, but those were the times.
Notice the young boys in the front row, to include a lad without shoes at center right, dressed like every stereotypical Tom Sawyer you've ever seen. For that matter, the fellow in the front row, a bit older, at the extreme left has no shoes either. But yet, most everyone has a hat. The ground in front of them looks littered with wood chips and other debris; tetanus is just waiting to happen.
My 21st century sensibility asks, why is a hat so important if you have no shoes? Working out in the sun makes hats a necessity, I know and social decorum of that era, I understand, made hats a requirement, but still....
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