Brooks Brothers was the largest and most visible clothing store in the downtown Seventh Ward. A contractor for the U.S. government, Brooks Brothers' owners had a reputation for treating their employees poorly; only four months earlier, four hundred Brooks Brothers' tailors had struck for higher wages. It is not clear whether the draft rioters targeted the store because of its recent labor troubles or merely because it was the largest store in the area: that the crowd also looted other stores lends credence to the latter interpretation. Whatever its motivation, when the crowd attacked the Brooks Brothers store and looted it on Tuesday evening, it became the site of another intense battle between rioters and the police. In the end, $50,000 worth of Brooks Brothers clothing was either stolen or destroyed in the riot.