Teacher Notes

Description

This activity has three parts:

1. An essay based on documents.
   
2. An oral history and subsequent report to the class.
   
3. A comparison of the two forms of historical evidence through a class discussion.
   

Students read an introductory essay and examine a set of documents to write an account of the introduction of nylon stockings and the effect of World War II on this new fiber. Students (either in addition to the document activity or instead of it) conduct an oral history with a woman who tried to buy stockings during World War II. Teachers might divide the class and have half do each part of the assignment and then compare their results during a class discussion.

Duration (approximate): 2 (47-minute) class periods

Learning Outcomes and Skills

1. Students learn that World War II brought shortages on the home front as well as hopes for postwar abundance fueled by science and technology.

2. Students learn that the story of a seemingly insignificant article (stockings) and the activities of ordinary people are the history of a particular time.

3. Students recognize that women's lives have been profoundly influenced by science and technology and think about the role of consumption and consumers in the history of science and technology.

4. Students think about and use documents and oral histories as different forms of historical evidence.

What You Will Need

Student Activity Packets which include:

Copy of Student Essay

Copy of Questions about stockings

Activity Documents including:

1. "Textiles: No. 2,130,948," Time, October 3, 1938, 47-8.

2. Du Pont Co. press release. October 28, 1938.

3. "Nylon Sellout," Newsweek, May 27, 1940, 65-66.

4. "Nylon," Life, June 10, 1940, 60-1.

5. "Stocking Panic," Business Week, August 9, 1941, 24.

6. "Hosiery Woes," Business Week, February 7, 1942, 40-3.

7. "A Woman Complains," Business Week, October 3, 1942, 87.

8. "Nylon After the War," Science News Letter, January 9, 1943, 19.

9. "Nylon in Tires," Scientific American, August 1943, 78.

10. Beatrice Oppenheim, "Post War Jobs For Nylon," New York Times Magazine, November 5, 1944, 37.

11. Edith Efron, "Legs are Bare Because They Can't Be Sheer," New York Times Magazine, June 24, 1945, 17.

12. "Bootleg Nylons," Readers Digest, February 1945, 66-8.

Copy of Oral History

Additional Information

Key points:

*Nylon hosiery was stronger and lasted longer than silk. Women were willing to sacrifice some of the sheerness of silk stockings for the strength and durability of nylon.

*Even before the war broke out, silk imports from Japan stopped. Silk supplies in America were then commandeered by the War Production Board for use in parachutes. This set off a run by women on the remaining silk stockings.

*Nylon was needed by the military for parachutes, airplane tires, sturdy thread, and flexible and strong netting. Nylon was so valuable to the military that they commandeered the entire production capacity of Du Pont indefinitely. This meant there was no nylon for women's stockings.

*Women complained that the nylon "substitutes" were inferior and wondered whether the absence of nylon hosiery was a result of the war or of greedy stocking producers. Women who bought on the black market did not necessarily feel unpatriotic because of their suspicions about wartime profiteering. Government efforts to suppress black markets worked only up to a certain point.

*The war helped expand the uses of nylon, opening up new possibilities for the uses of synthetic fibers across many industries.

*During World War II, government and industry joined to keep people at home committed to the war effort by reminding them of the consumer products they would be able to buy in the post war prosperity. Stockings were just one of many products that were presented in the popular press as a technological benefit consumers would enjoy after the war ended.

Oral History:

Prepare students for their interviews by discussing how they might best approach their subjects. Students will need to be active participants in the interview process. Specialists in oral history believe the real work of the interview happens in the interaction between the interviewer and his or her subject.

Students will find that oral histories usually do not provide reliable dates or statistics, but can convey how the individual experience fits into the more general picture uncovered in documents. Historian Vicki Ruiz has written, "oral history offers a venue for exploring past expectations and for preserving a historical memory of attitudes and feelings. "

To Student Activity Packet