The Gang's All Here

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....