LUYỆN DỊCH QUÁ KHỨ ĐƠN-BÀI 2

LUYỆN DỊCH QUÁ KHỨ ĐƠN-BÀI 2

Levi Straus (1829-1902)

By LỚP ANH CÔ TÂM

One of the best-known beneficiaries of California's gold rush economic boom was Levi Strauss.  He was born in Bavaria and came to San Francisco in 1850, one of the thousands hoping to strike it rich. Trained as a tailor, he planned to manufacture tents and wagon covers for the Forty-niners, but he couldn’t find a market for these items.  So he used the stout canvas he had brought with him to make especially durable trousers, which miners found perfect for their difficult work. He began selling these "wonderful pants of Levi's" and they went as fast as he could make them.

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Strauss opened a factory at 98 Battery Street in San Francisco, began adding copper rivets at the stress points in his trousers and switched from canvas to a heavy blue denim material called “genes” in France, which became "jeans" in America. Following his quick success in the clothing business, he branched out to serve as a director of an insurance company, a utility company, several banks, and in a variety of charitable organizations.

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The company Levi Strauss founded remains one of the nation's leading clothing manufacturers, but even more impressively, the garment he created, still known as "levis," has long since left the diggings to become not only an emblem of the American West but an emissary of the Western lifestyle -- egalitarian, utilitarian, independent -- around the world. Levi Strauss died in San Francisco in 1902.

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