Not So Small

I found another Australian newspaper from 1923 advertising Gossard Longerlyne Brassieres, but there were no pictures. " The ideal brassiere for the not so small figures."  Well, mine IS a size 44.

It looks pretty bad.  I haven't washed it.  Perhaps I should!

Made of heavy peach cotton topped by a doubled cotton lace, and finished with substantial cotton straps, this bra is made for heavier use than the previous ones.  There are triangular inserts of elastic material at the bottom sides.  There is a nice dip in the back, leading me to believe this may be from the 1930's.  It still has the corset hook in the front, however.

Too much glare to read the penciled notation on the folded part.  It read 776, with a line under it, then 175.  That may have been the price.

The H W Gossard Company, of Chicago, IL, was listed in a 1917 trade journal as selling front lacing corsets and brassieres.  This ad is from 1918.

Here is an article about the Ishpeming, Michigan Gossard plant and how it became unionized.  Basically the workers were happy and did not want a union, but the ILGWU didn't like that they were getting more money than union workers and that the company wanted to move more work to Ishpeming because the workers were so much more efficient than union workers, so they sent an agitator there.  The vote went against the union three times.  As soon as they got the union in there, of course it went on strike.  It took a long time to force the company to give them the wages the union thought they should have.  Nobody likes to be forced to do something they don't believe in.  If they had just left them alone the workers would have been happy and so would the company, and things would have progressed normally.  I hate unions.

It seems the Gossard family moved to Colorado and bred livestock with the money from their corset empire.  An interesting history is here.  Go down to the bottom.