Meet the American who invented the hard hat, a proud symbol of our nation’s working class

Hard hats are the team headgear of working-class America — the people who built the United States with their bare hands. The people who still build the USA today.

Tip your safety cap to Edward W. Bullard (1893-1963), a U.S. Army veteran who crafted the world’s most important piece of industrial protective equipment after returning from the carnage of World War I.

“Hard-hat workers are brave people doing important work,” said Wells Bullard, CEO of E.D. Bullard Co. in Kentucky, a manufacturer of personal safety equipment. She’s also a great-granddaughter of the hard-hat inventor.

“They are the people building our roads, bridges and infrastructure, moving our economy forward,” she added.

The effort requires a lot of Bullard’s hard hats.

Edward W. Bullard, a veteran of World War I, invented the hard hat in 1919. It was inspired by the helmets worn by American doughboys.

Some 33 million Americans, about 10 percent of the national population, work hard-hat jobs today, according to Cam Mackey, president and CEO of the International Safety Equipment Association. Edward Bullard helped found the nonprofit trade association in 1933.

The hard hat today is more than just an important piece of personal safety equipment.

It came to symbolize the growing schism between working-class Americans and leftist elitists during the Vietnam War, most notably during the New York City Hard Hat Riot of 1970.

Construction workers, incensed by images of people burning American flags, walked off their job sites en masse and clashed with largely college-educated, white-collar anti-American protesters in Lower Manhattan.

About 150 people were battered and bloodied on the streets, 40 of them suffered head wounds, six men were beaten unconscious, David Paul Kuhn, author of “The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution,” told Fox News Digital.

“After that day, the hard hat became a political symbol,” he said.

Demonstrators marched with American flags during the Hard Hat Riot in New York City in May 1970. Working-class, pro-American demonstrators clashed with anti-Vietnam War protesters. More than 100 people were injured.

The nation is still dealing with the fallout today.

The hard hat carries symbolism far from the job site.

Inspired by Doughboy helmet

Edward R. Bullard was born in Liberty, N.M., on Dec. 1, 1893 before moving as a young boy with his family to California.

His father, Edward D. Bullard, founded the E.D. Bullard Co. in San Francisco in 1898, providing lamps and other gear to miners who flooded the region during the Gold Rush. The company in recent decades moved its operations to Kentucky.

The younger Bullard graduated from the University of California at Berkeley before shipping off to France in World War I.

American troops at the World War I front deliver soup to their comrades, 1917-1918. World War I veteran Edward Bullard was inspired by doughboy steel helmets to invent the first construction hard hat in 1919.

“He was in the trenches in Europe,” Wells Bullard said, then returned from war to work at the family business.

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