Word: stetson
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Halos of Thieves & Rustlers. With $10 worth of fur and $90 in cash, Stetson settled in Philadelphia (where headquarters have since remained) to turn out his hats, which he named "The Boss of the Plains." They had an immediate popularity among Westerners. Even by the '70s, thieves and rustlers who were shot and dumped in unmarked graves were later identified by the hatbands in their hats: one of Stetson's first tricks of merchandising was to stamp the retailer's name in the band in gold...
...playboy sons who became directors of the company were no chips off the old block. John B. Jr.'s biggest contribution to the company was an impulsive gesture which brought the company fame. On a trip to Arizona in 1901, he tossed his well-worn Stetson into Fossil Creek near the great Natural Bridge. Twenty years later the hat had turned into a 40-lb. hunk of limestone, still shaped in the identifiable form of a Stetson. Manhattan's Museum of Natural History added the stone to its permanent collection...
...trademark flourished. Every cowboy, fake and real, from Buffalo Bill to the Lone Ranger, wore a Stetson. After the Boer War, famed General R. S. S. Baden-Powell ordered 10,000 Stetsons for his South African police, setting the style for thousands of police and military institutions to follow (including Canada's Mounties, the Texas Rangers, Fiorello LaGuardia). The Oxford English Dictionary picked up the name Stetson as a synonym...
Under convivial fur-expert James Howell Cummings, who succeeded old John B. as president, Stetson also made a name as an "industrial democracy." At lavish Christmas parties, employes were given turkeys, gold watches, bonuses totaling up to $400,000 a year. There was a Stetson hospital, Stetson Sunday school, Stetson chorus, Stetson baseball team, Stetson tennis courts and swimming pool, even a Stetson cooperative grocery. But the depression put an end to most of this...
...quiet George L. Russell Jr., current up-from-the-ranks president, foresees some trying days ahead. The price of fur, the principal raw material, has almost doubled since the war began. To pay for and operate Mallory, Stetson has to borrow $2,500,000. Nevertheless, convinced that many of the world's heads are still uncovered, Stetson expects that its new investment will keep it in the black...