Hats & Hatters

When, last week, Knox Hat Co., Inc., announced an offering* of no par, non-voting common at $140 a share, a few U. S. hat wearers remembered the time (1917) when Knox shares were selling at $6. That was during a reorganization period following the retirement (1913) of Colonel Edward M. Knox, son of Founder Charles Knox, and before the arrival of the present management, which, under the leadership of President F. H. Montgomery, showed net earnings in 1928 of $859,997, or $10.10 a share on common stock. Acquiring Dunlap & Co. (1919), Long's Hat Stores Corp. (1927), Kaskel & Kaskel Corp. (1928), Knox Hat Co., Inc., today operates 62 retail stores as well as distributing Knox and Dunlap hats through some 2,500 agencies. Net sales in 1928 were $8,141,323.

Hats. The felt hat, as everyone knows, is made from rabbit fur. According to ancient Chinese legend, the discovery of the felt hat resulted from the aching feet of a tired Chinaman. This Chinaman, rabbit hunting, had caught several rabbits.

In catching the rabbits, however, he had tramped many a mile, and sore and painful were his feet. So he skinned two of his rabbits, put their fur in his shoes, and quickly eased his throbs and burnings.

How this experience resulted in felt hats rather than in felt shoes, legend does not relate, but it is undeniably true that the raw material for felt hats is the little animal with the long ears and the reputation for timidity and fertility. The straw hat lacks a romantic legendary origin, but includes in its ranks probably the world's most expensive hat--the Panama--handwoven from fibres of palm leaves in Ecuador and priced up to $500. Knox sells about a half dozen a year of the $500 variety.

Heads. The hatter deals with heads as much as with hats, and many a famed head, including the heads of 23 U. S Presidents, has been protected and ornamented with Knox hats. The hatter, of course, takes a bird's-eye view of heads and in the Knox files are thousands of outlines (technically known as "conforms") of heads as they appear when looked straight down at. Generally speaking, there are two main types of outline--a long, narrow ellipse hardly wider at the centre than at the ends, and a short, pear-shaped figure with the wide part at the back. Long and narrow were the heads of Theodore Roosevelt, Robert G. Ingersoll, Victor Herbert. Short and pear-shaped were the heads of Ulysses S. Grant, Charles Frohman, General Phil Sheridan.

Calvin Coolidge's cranium shows a distinct bump on the left side and William Howard Taft's has bumps on both sides.

Manhattan's Jimmy Walker has the narrow oval head; Pittsburgh's Andrew Mellon is pronouncedly among the pear-heads.

Knox men say that judges and generals have usually the same shaped heads.

The average hat size is 7 1/8. Among average size takers are Calvin Coolidge and Al Jolson. John D. Rockefeller Sr. wears a 7 1/2 John D. Rockefeller Jr. a 7 3/8. The largest hat ever made was a special order from a Ringling Brothers Giant, who weighed 480 pounds and took an 8 7/8. There is not much variation in straw hat styles, straws of the present (delayed) season tending toward a narrowed brim and a slightly bell-shaped crown.

Figures on hat sales show that many a thrifty U. S. citizen must wear old hats through new seasons, as U. S. hat consumption is only 1/2 a hat per capita per annum.

Charles Knox, founder of Knox Hats, came to the U. S. from Ireland in 1830, aged 12. The New York bound ship in which he crossed the Atlantic had been blown far out of its course and finally made port at Wilmington, Del., leaving Charles, 12, and his sister Margaret, 10, stranded 118 miles from their parents in Manhattan. "How are you going to get to New York?" asked the ship captain, who wanted to put Margaret in some Wilmington household and ship Charles as a cabin boy. "We'll walk," said Charles, and they did, in two weeks, to Battery Park, Manhattan.

Charles was apprenticed to Leary & Co., famed hatters of 105 Broad St. After learning his trade at a salary of $25 a year, he was given a $250 bonus and a $10 a week job. Still not quite 20 years old, Charles Knox opened the first Knox shop at 110 Fulton St. So small was his store that only one customer at a time could be accommodated. Thus the shop became known as the Hole in the Wall, a title which many a small retailer has since appropriated. But many a hat came out of the hole and Hatter Knox soon moved to larger quarters. Among early Knox customers were Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, James Gordon Bennet, Thurlow Weed, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln.

In 1857 there came to the Knox store a mother with her 12 year old son, asked Hatter Knox to give her Robert a job.

Hatter Knox consented, employed 12-year-old to make fires, to sweep the shop, to run errands, all for $3 weekly.

Soon the boy graduated to the ranks of the hat salesmen, and several years later was still selling Knox hats, his salary now having risen to $12 weekly. Ambitious, he asked for $15. But Hatter Knox refused the raise. Angry, Robert left, started his own hat business. Thus began the famed Dunlap hat company, founded by Robert Dunlap, onetime Knox errand boy.

Meanwhile Hatter Knox was growing old, and gray were the hairs under the Knox hat worn on the Knox head. So gradually Hatter Knox's son, Colonel Edward Knox, took control of the business.

When Charles Knox died (1895) the business had already been for some years under the direction of Colonel Knox* whose chief problem was competition with the rapidly rising Dunlap hat. Whether because Robert Dunlap, liberal, kindly, used frequently to suspend production in Dunlap shops while he bought beer for the men and ice cream for the women, or because of a secret process by which Hatter Dunlap succeeded in turning out the blackest derbies ever known, the Dunlap hat eventually outsold the Knox in Manhattan. For many a year small hat-makers held up their spring lines until they could see and imitate the Dunlap derby and the Knox felt. As for Knox-Dunlap competition, both the Knox and the Dunlap businesses declined with the age and retirement of their two leaders and soon after the present Knox management had rehabilitated the Knox company it absorbed the Dunlap also.

*Although the Colonel was an honorary title, conferred by Congress, Colonel Knox was no armchair military man. He fought in the Civil War and was wounded at Gettysburg.