[Music intro]
[Robin] And finally, Knoxville's history includes nicknames like
the Marble City, Scruffy City, and so on.
[John] 10News reporter Jim Matheny examines another nickname in the drawers of history
that made Knoxville the underwear capital of the world.
[Train horn]
[Jack] It was incredible, the number of things Knoxville made for the whole nation.
[Jim] Reflect on the vacant mill just beside Downtown Knoxville
[Footsteps]
and historian Jack Neely can spin a yarn about the past,
where, for more than a century,
[Mechanical whirring]
textiles told the tale of the city's economy.
[Jack] At one time, there were 13 textile mills in Knoxville.
It was enormous.
[Car drives by]
We're looking at the old Standard Knitting Mill.
This is actually a later addition to the knitting mill,
which has been here since about 1900 or so.
It was the single biggest employer in Knoxville, at one time.
3,500 people worked here.
It claimed to be the biggest textile manufacturing plant in America.
[Rattling]
[Jim] For Standard Knitting and many other mills in town,
the long and short of it was underwear.
[Jack] Yeah, well, Knoxville was the underwear capital
and it was because of all the underwear manufacturers.
[Rattling]
They made mainly undergarments.
T-shirts, underwear, long johns, union suits they'd call them in those days, socks.
Three different hosiery mills at one time.
They made, I think, 43 million garments a year.
Just some incredible number.
[Train horn]
[Jim] Knoxville had the workforce and the railroads
to stitch and ship the latest styles across the country.
In the 1930s, that included the latest bombshell design of jockey shorts
that could make every man resemble the brawny Tarzan.
[Bouncy music]
While that's some bold embroidery on the benefits of briefs,
it's no fabrication to say Knoxville mills truly supported the troops.
[Music continues]
[Jack] They ramp up production during wars, especially during World War II.
[Music continues] [Plane engine]
[Jim] Knoxville plants landed huge government contracts
to cover the military by weaving thermal underwear for warmth
[Mechanical whirring]
and millions of white cotton t-shirts and boxer shorts,
especially appreciated by those trying to keep cool in the South Pacific.
[Narrator] The physical depression of the tropics.
This aircrew member recommends t-shirts under the regulation shirt
or as outer garments by themselves.
[Jack] It's likely that anybody that was in World War II
was wearing something manufactured in Knoxville.
[Jim] Now, after the war, some of the mills here in Knoxville
kept cranking out products for the military.
But by the mid-1950s,
many of the mills here were just hanging on by a thread.
And some of the biggest operations, including Appalachian Mills,
which was located right here on 17th Street,
had to shut down in 1956.
[Jack] Yeah, Knoxville actually lost 10% of its population in the 1950s.
[Mechanical whirring]
[Jim] While most of the mills unraveled,
Standard Knitting Mill saw success
by stitching one of the nation's most popular brands.
[Jack] The Healthknit brand, which you saw all over the country,
was all manufactured right here.
[Mechanical whirring]
[Jim] Sales for Standard soared during an era when
men could double their comfort with cigarettes and Healthknit tighty whities.
[Mechanical whirring]
Then the brand threaded its way into a new market
of colorful expression in the 1960s and '70s.
[Jack] We forget that t-shirts were just underwear for a long time.
They were all white until about the late 1960s
and you started seeing pictures on t-shirts.
And a lot of the cool new t-shirts with like "Keep on truckin" and
Mickey Mouse and all these things the hippies were wearing,
they made those here.
[Mechanical whirring]
There's a hip side to underwear manufacturing.
[Reporter] While most industries are forced to lay off workers,
Standard has been lucky.
[Bell rings]
[Jim] But even a behemoth like Standard Knitting Mill
could not avoid the seismic shift unfolding overseas.
[People talking indistinctly]
After a series of layoffs in the mid 1980s,
new ownership took over the mill in 1988.
[Reporter] Standard Knitting Mill sold out to Delta Apparel.
Workers were hoping Delta would save their jobs.
[Jim] It only took a few months for Delta to go
from talking about new expansions in Knoxville
to hanging hundreds of employees out to dry.
[Reporter] These employees were told just this morning
that in 60 days they would be out of work.
[Man] It's reprehensible the way this company has behaved.
[Woman 1] I think it stinks.
[Woman 2] We spent and raise our kids in this mill.
[Woman 3] That's the saddest part.
[Sniffling]
[Woman 2] Leaving all your friends behind.
[People talking indistinctly]
[Jim] Workers at the old Standard Knitting Mill sewed their last stitches
[Machine motor running]
on August 11, 1989.
[Metal clanging]
[Car drives by]
Since then, many of the other old mills in town
have become home to new businesses.
[Train horn]
But Standard has struggled to find suitors for this sprawling space.
A place that still offers a reflection of the past
when mills intertwined to support the nation
and made Knoxville the underwear capital of the world.
[Jack] Yeah and that might be funny to anybody that doesn't wear underwear,
but to everybody who does wear underwear, it's an important title.
[Jim] In Knoxville, Jim Matheny WBIR 10News.
[Music ends]
[John] We'll leave the boxer or brief discussion to you and yours.
Knoxville may have another claim to fame in the history of underwear.
[Robin] Yeah, the website for Bike Athletic
says the very first jock straps were made in Knoxville back in 1874.
They were made to protect people riding bicycles on cobblestone streets.
Who knew?
[John] Yeah, for what it's worth,
Jack Neely says he is still looking through old articles to ensure
that fable is true.
[Robin laughs]
[Robin] We learn so much about Knoxville through Jim Matheny and Jack Neely.
And that's gonna do it for us.
Thanks so much for watching.