Whence came the phrase "get down to brass tacks"?

John

Supposedly rhyming slang for facts.

Charles Funk, in A Hog on Ice, says that the phrase seems to have originated in some specific operation which would have required the removal of successive layers until the brass tacks were exposed, but that the references only contain the figurative use and are too recent to afford any clue to the purpose of the first brass tacks. He recounts the suggestion that the saying originated from the brass upholstery tacks place on counters in drapers' shops for use in measuring lengths of cloth, but says that explanation seems fanciful to him because the practice is not old and the tacks of comparatively modern manufacture.

OTOH, David Feldman in Who Put the Butter in Butterfly? and Jordan Almond in Dictionary of Word Origins both say that the expression does come from early English drapers' shops.

Here's the way I heard it ... from an elderly friend of my Dad's. His Dad was a "drummer" (travelling salesman) in the Heartland in the late 1800s.
Yard sticks were in short supply.
Not considered a neccesity when travelling west in a covered wagon.
Drummers who sold fabric would carry a wooden yard stick. The drummer would put the yard stick on a wooden counter and the ends were marked, then brass tacks were nailed on the two end marks. Brass upholstery tacks were used as they have shiny heads, easy to see and didn't generally rust.
When a woman came in to buy fabric, if the store keeper tried to measure the cloth by eye she would tell him to "Get down to brass tacks." In other words, to measure it correctly, not guess, or cheat by "shorting" her.
The phrase appears to have come into the language with that meaning.

Not being chauvanist, women were generally the fabric purchasers in those days.