SA5 519 917 THE STORY OF TWO FAMOUS HATTERS 'A! is 'V 'It 'V /7 A "V N 7 $ k 'Ili 1~ 'I V - K A "I' V A 7 'A ~ QJ C1,4 1=' /7/ - 'V I' 'I' '7 A U N LAP UDPLA1<. Ii ~D Qr~A& Jti TS 200o.U k7 THE STORY OF TWO FAMOUS HATTERS THE STORY OF TWO FAMOUS HATTERS BY ROBERT R. UPDEGRAFF PRIVATELY PRINTED KNOX HAT COMPANY INCOR PORATED NEW YORK, 1926 Copyright 1926 Knox Hat Co., Inc. DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES KNOX AND ROBERT DUNLAP Sr. CHARLES KNOX A ROBERT DUNLAP ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN MILES TO NEW YORK ONE morning in the year 1830 there limped into the harbor at Wilmington, Delaware, a little sailing vessel from Moville, sailing port of Londonderry, Ireland, badly crippled and blown far out of her course, for her destination had been New York. When his little craft was safely moored, the Captain faced a perplexing problem: what to do with two of his passengers, a boy of twelve and his sister, a girl of ten. The two youngsters had sailed with him, expecting to be landed in New York where they were to be met by their parents, sturdy -Scotch folk who, with eight older children, had come to America two years before to seek their fortune. Not a penny had the two children, nor even the address of their parents in New York. What was to be done with them? TWO FAMOUS HATTERS The captain pondered the problem and finally hit upon what he thought the solution. "If you'll find your sister a home in Wilmington, I'll take you on as cabin boy," he told the lad. But the boy would have none of his plan. His father had sent for him and his sister to join the family in New York, and to New York they would go. "But New York is a hundred and eighteen miles from here and you have no money for the fare," objected the captain. "How will you get there?" It was the first serious problem the lad had ever faced and he met it with a courage and directness and a singleness of purpose that were to be characteristic of him in after years when problems confronted him at every turn. "We'll walk," he said simply. "Come along, Margaret." And so the two children, Charles and Margaret, gathered up their simple belongings and set out on foot for New York. For two weeks they walked, doing chores for their food at farm houses along the way, and sleeping in barns and farm houses at night. Their shoes wore through and their clothes [41 TWO FAMOUS HATTERS were almost in tatters, but on they trudged. Another week passed, and finally one morning they arrived in New York, ragged, dirty, foot-sore, and thoroughly forlorn. The New York of that day, but a town as compared with the teeming metropolis of today, centered around the Battery. It was here that the two plucky little pilgrims from Wilmington found themselves along about noon. Awed by the confusion and dismayed over the problem of finding their parents in this great city, Charles and his sister sat down on the door-step of a house facing Battery Park. As they sat there, utterly weary, wondering what to do next, Charles suddenly gave a cry of joy. "Sarah " he called. And then Margaret joined in. "Sarah," she half sobbed as she too caught sight of a familiar figure. Call it coincidence, or credit it to a watchful Providence, the fact is that at that very moment the children's oldest sister was passing the doorstep on which they were sitting, probably on her way home for dinner. Imagine her amazement when she heard her name shouted by two pitifully [5] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS bedraggled children, and suddenly found herself smothered in a double embrace. Thus it came to pass that the two little travelers were united with their family in America, a land where in a few short years, had Charles but known it, even Presidents were to bare their heads to him! LEADING TO "THE HOLE IN THE WALL" As the lad's family was large and his father's means scant, further education was not to be thought of. Accordingly, before many months had passed, young Charles was apprenticed to Leary & Company, then famous hatters with a store at 105 Broad Street, at the munificent wage of twenty-five dollars per year. The young apprentice proved admirably suited to the trade and when his apprenticeship had expired Leary gave him $250.00 and agreed to pay him ten dollars per week. After a time he was made foreman of the shop. There was something about the hats made under the direction of the young foreman that gave them distinction and caused them to sell readily. [6] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS He noticed this himself and it set him to thinking. Making hats for Leary & Company to sell was all very well, but why not turn his talent to making hats to sell for himself? It took courage in those days to start a business in New York, especially if one had little money; but the courage that had started the lad of twelve on his one-hundred-and-eighteen-mile walk from Wilmington had not diminished in the eight years he had been learning the hatter's trade. If going into business for oneself was a desirable thing to do, that was sufficient: he would go into business for himself. He knew his trade and he had faith in himself: what more was needed other than the opportunity the world offered to any young man so equipped? It transpired, therefore, that in the year 1838, while still under twenty years of age, the young hatter boldly undertook two great enterprises: he married, and on May first he opened his own hat shop at 110 Fulton Street near the corner of Nassau Street. Over the door of the little shop, which promptly came to be known as "The Hole in the Wall" be[71 TWO FAMOUS HATTERS cause it was so tiny that but one customer could be accommodated at a time, the hopeful young hatter hung his sign: KNOX, HATTER His first customer was a colored man named Downing, cook in a famous oyster house of that day, a good omen according to an old Scotch superstition, and so regarded by the young proprietor. Here in this little shop Charles Knox sold his hats by day, delivered them at night, and rose at four every morning to make more. In those days Fulton Street was a much used thoroughfare to the waterfront, and between four and five in the morning the little store often did a lively cap business with sailors returning to their ships after a night in the city. There was something about the hats that men bought at "The Hole in the Wall" that made them different from the hats they could buy elsewhere. Perhaps it was the touch of style, or perhaps it was the workmanship, or the long wear that seemed somehow to be built into them. At any [8] KNOX, OLASSICAL HATTER, 22a aoAN vWT. CJeF.L TFX-iolvJ sr. 1106 -----.----------- - --- --.--- ------ ----- ~ I ~ - I a~ eoi ~~E~s" e~ ~ik ALL ARTICLES USUAL TO THE TRADE. (fap fa (offlrs of tht a0ab a r m, AS PER REGI rATIONR GHOSSAI08. P 9ri 9J. eckum S. One of the interesting features of this early Knox advertisement is the statement, "No hat will be sold unless becoming to the customer." Still a good policy. TWO FAMOUS HATTERS rate, within a few years the tiny shop proved inadequate to serve all those who wished to be hatted by Knox, and he moved to a larger store at 128 Fulton Street, in the old Sun Building. This new and larger store, with its more prominent location, its larger potential patronage, and its opportunity for developing trade among outof-town visitors to whom there might never be an opportunity to make another sale, would have tempted some men to change the emphasis from making to selling. They would have cheapened their hats and sacrificed future fame to present profits. But this never occurred to the 29-yearold hatter who now emerged from his "Hole in the Wall" and shouldered the expenses and responsibilities of a full-fledged Fulton Street merchant (and what a street Fulton was in those days when it served as the highway to the Brooklyn ferries!) in the biggest city in America. His chief concern was that Knox hats should be as good as he could possibly make them. Let it not be supposed that all this time Knox was free from the onslaughts of competition. Competition was hitter in the hat trade in the New [10] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS York of that time, and competitors were none too gracious toward each other. M. R. Werner, in his book, Barnum, tells of the battle of the hatters at the time Barnum brought Jenny Lind to this country, in 1850. THE BATTLE OF THE HATTERS THE astute showman conceived the brilliant idea of auctioning the tickets for the opening concert in Castle Garden (now the Aquarium), and Werner relates: "The bidding for the first ticket was lively, and the four thousand persons who had come out on a rainy day to pay their money and take their choice grew excited. Prices rose rapidly, and the first ticket was finally sold for $225 to Genin, the hatter, whose establishment adjoined Barnum's American Museum. This was the best stroke of business Genin ever did. Newspapers in Houston, Texas, Portland, Maine, and intervening cities and villages, announced to their interested readers that Genin, the Broadway hatter, had purchased the first ticket for the first Jenny Lind concert at the enormous price of $225. More than two million readers knew the next [ 11 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS morning that Genin was a hatter. An Iowa editor printed the story of one of his neighbors who discovered that he owned a hat with Genin's label. He pointed it out to the loungers at the village post office, and he was urged to give his neighbors an opportunity for distinction by putting the hat up at auction. It was finally sold to an excited townsman for fourteen dollars. In New York men hurried to Genin's shop to purchase hats, and, if possible, to catch a glimpse of the man who had paid $225 for the first ticket. "Other hatters were envious of Genin's Barnumized notoriety, and Knox, the hatter of 128 Fulton Street, advertised in the New York Tribune two days after Genin's purchase: 'There is no truth in the assertion that Knox, the hatter, paid $225 for the choice of a seat at Jenny Lind's first concert. Knox can't afford it; and it must have been done by some Broadway Hatter, who sells a poor article at a high price, as Knox is contented with very small profits. His Fall style of Hats is the admiration of everybody.' "Espenscheid, of 107 Nassau Street, advertised: 'THAT TICKET-The sensible portion of the I 1e\ TWO FAMOUS HATTERS community begin to see the folly of contributing to the support of the. Broadway $4 hatters in luxury and idleness, and paying for their expensive show-shops, and $22 Concert rTickets, when they have only to turn the corner of the Museum and walk a few steps to Espenscheid's, 107' Nassau Street, where a be tter, lighter, more graceful and durable Hat is sold for $3.50.'" It may have been this experience that aroused Charles Knox to the value of publicity; at any rate he developed into a very shrewd advertiser. His little "readers" were to be found at the bottomn of the news columns of the papers of that day and he grasped every opportunity to break into print that the world might knowv that Knox was a hatter at 128 Fulton Street.. "cWHERE THE MOST MEN PASS" By 1854 he had again outgrown his store. "Where shall I move to?" he asked himself. In spite of his gratuitous dig at his rival, Genin, he knew well enough that the prime location for a retail hat store was Broadway. Broadway rents were high, to be sure. "But the place to sell the most [ 13 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS hats is the place where the most men pass," Knox argued with himself, "and rent after all is a relative matter." With the same directness with which he had decided to walk to New York when a lad of twelve, and with which he had decided to start his own shop as a youth of nineteen, he made up his mind to rent the best location he could find on Broadway. The word "sometime" had no place in the business vocabulary of Charles Knox. He had a keen sense of the fleetness of time and realized that if a man was to succeed in business in the brief span allotted him between apprenticeship and the inevitable day of retirement, action must crowd decision, even as decision must press close upon the heels of the sensing of a need or an opportunity. Charles Knox lost no time, therefore, in negotiating a lease for that very desirable location, 212 Broadway, at the corner of Fulton Street, a location near enough to his earlier stores to suit the convenience of the trade he had built up, and right on the brink of the stream of fashionable traffic that was the Broadway of 1854. The building he moved into was an old wooden [ 14 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS structure, owned by the Lorillard estate. Knox desired to buy the property, but found it impossible to negotiate the purchase of the complete parcel because of the fact that it was divided among all the Lorillard heirs, as specified in the Lorillard will, and every time a new baby arrived in any branch of the family, the property had to be redivided, until it was so minutely subdivided that no one heir owned more than a very few square feet! The only possible way to acquire the property was to purchase it piece by piece in direct negotiation with the heir-owners or their guardians, and this Knox presently set out to do. Every so often he would announce, upon reaching home of an evening, "Well, I've bought another few feet of the store today!" until it became a family joke. He continued to buy piece after piece until he owned the entire parcel, whereupon he promptly tore down the ramshackle building and built a modern one, with his store on the ground floor and his hat factory on the upper floors. But Knox's business was not to escape the, vicissitudes that lie in the path of nearly every 15] The Knox business suffered 'most of the set-backs that can come to a business. But they were regarded by the indomitable founder merely as interruptions, not to be taken too seriously. TWO FAMOUS HATTERS enterprise, seemingly placed- there by a perverse fate for the purpose of testing men's mettle. In 1865, when things were going along flourishingly, Barnum's American Museum, which adjoined Knox's store and faced on Ann Street, caught fire one night and both buildings burned to the ground. The fire cost Knox $60,000 but, nothing daunted, he rebuilt and in four months' time was doing a flourishing business again. His troubles were not over, however, for three years later the new building became the storm center of a battle between Knox and the city authorities. The crossing at Broadway and Fulton Street had become very difficult on account of the many lines of stages that ran up and down Broadway, so the city built a bridge across that thoroughfare right in front of the Knox store. It was thought at first a very good scheme, but its use soon proved it to be a nuisance. It became a rendezvous for loafers, crooks and pickpockets. Also, it obstructed Knox's store window., Knox decided that the bridge must come down and promptly challenged the City by starting a legal fight to have the structure removed.. His op[ 17]J TWO FAMOUS HATTERS ponent was Commissioner Loew, and the battle that followed was bitter, but Knox fought to a finish-and won. Loew's bridgehad to come down. Moral courage nearly always commands publicity, and in this case Knox was amply repaid by the newspaper fame his fight earned for him. For months he and his store were front-page news, and he was nearly always referred to as "Knox, the hatter." When the courts finally rendered a verdict in his favor, the newspapers had pictures of the funeral pile of the razed structure with the inscription over it, "I have fought the good fight but 'Hard Knox' laid me Loew." A CITIZEN OF CONSEQUENCE ALL these years Charles Knox had been building himself into the life of the growing city. He was an upright man and highly respected. At exactly ten minutes to twelve every Saturday night he closed his store and ceased being a hatter until Monday morning, to be Charles Knox, father and citizen. Sunday with the Knox family was a day of rest and worship. The Knox family pew in St. James Lutheran Church, of which Charles Knox [ 18 TWO FAMOUS HATTERS was treasurer for more than twenty years, was rarely vacant of a Sunday morning. As he sat with his wife and his son Edward, listening to the long sermons, relegating to his subconscious mind the problems of his business, he little realized how much a part of the life of the city-yes, and of the Nation-he was becoming. And how could he know that the men whose pews adjoined his and who were his close personal friends-the Havemeyers and the Mollers and the Geisenheimers and the Ocherhousens -were one day to be famous as"sugar magnates"? Or how was he to foresee that some of the men who came to his store to buy hats on week days, men who like himself were just making their places in the world, would be immortal a generation later: Daniel Webster, HenryClay, Horace Greeley, A.T. Stewart, James Gordon Bennett, to mention but a few of the tobe-illustrious Americans who prided themselves on being hatted by Knox! Through the process of time, and by virtue of the merit of the hats he made, quite unconsciously Knox was developing leadership as a hatter. In shape, proportion, lines, and trim, his hats seemed [19] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS always to anticipate the style. And because of the fine materials, the skilful workmanship, and the special care exercised in their finishing, they held their style. As a fashion writer of that day put it, "They show their style as long as worn." George P. Rowell, America's pioneer advertising agent, throws further light on Knox's success as a hatter in his book, The Men Who Advertise, published in 1870. "The simple fact that Mr. Knox had hats to sell would never have made his fortune in the world. Having them, he was determined to let people know it, and to this end he advertised extensively, calling to his aid all the daily papers of the city, since it was from New York that he expected to obtain the most of his custom. He has always advertised liberally and persistently. He is a great friend of the 'Special notice' column of the newspapers, and has the happy faculty of making his advertisements short, pithy, popular, readable and attractive. This is done by always connecting them with some topic or event which is the conversation of the hour. The following may be taken as examples: [ 0] a~~tc i-:6~ \~ a t r: -:~a. '';-~.i FC "..: c 2'~1:i i~ a~i~ -~ ii: 1-:~ -::::~:rl;c;C3~*~%~ol~i~-~~~ I ~Cr ~~c, -iil ~i~~lr P I-T:~: i;I~": II: ~i:: ~h, ~0 il-.-..:;Sz id Horace Greeley and his Knox hat. This miniature was painted expressly for Charles Knox and is considered a remarkably fine example of miniature painting. TWO FAMOUS HATTERS "Although Queen Isabella has lost her crown, the crowns of Knox's hats never come out, as every one who purchases them at the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street will testify." "Not a man who wore Knox's hats during the earthquake in San Francisco had them shaken off.") "Such advertisements as these are constantly appearing in all of the New York papers. The result is, everybody sees them, reads them, remembers that Mr. Knox is the hatter, and rushes to his store to purchase. When they get there they find a large room, elegantly fitted up, with black walnut cases, a crowd of polite clerks, and a large assortment of hats. Nothing but a good and fashionable article is offered for sale, and the customer goes away satisfied. So it has come about that Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln, Thurlow Weed, Horace Greeley, James Gordon Bennett, Daniel Lord, and scores of other men, have bought their hats of Mr. Charles Knox." In that day as in later days, leadership in New York virtually meant leadership throughout the country. Thus it came to be the custom of the notables of the day to visit Knox's store when [ 22] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS they came to New York, there to purchase a new hat before entering upon their business or social engagements, that they might be "in the New York mode." Knox spent a great deal of his time in his store, though not a day passed that he did not go all through his shop upstairs, watching how his hats were being made and helping to solve the problems that his men were encountering in their work. In the store he had his own characteristic way of stimulating sales. Let one of his friends but step in the door and Knox would remove the man's hat and hand it to one of the clerks, explaining to his visitor that it was high time that he either bought a new hat, or else had the old one sent upstairs to be ironed. MAKING HATS BACKWARD THERE was this difference about buying one of Knox's hats, or buying one of Espenscheid's, or any of the other hatters' of that day: when a man went to Knox's store he went, not for a four-dollar hat or a five-dollar hat, or a hat of any particular price or style. He went there for a Knox hat, p23] y /:sl r I i I ~~ i YJFI~.3 ri~ i ~3p, IL! Cii~ 'I ~~. _L~:, Ii_:-CL i k i i..... 9' Charles Knox was a great believer in publicity, as this page from The Daily Graphic attests. It reflects interestingly the atmosphere of the '80's in the hat business. TWO FAMOUS HATTERS no matter what its price or its style, for he knew from experience, or from the testimony of his neighbors who had patronized the well-known hatter, that the style of a Knox hat was bound to be right for the simple reason that Knox set the style; and the price would be right because the price was determined solely by quality. A fourdollar or five-dollar Knox hat would be fourdollars' or five-dollars' worth of honest quality, with the Knox style added for full measure. The truth of the matter was, Knox made his hats backward, in a ma -nner of speaking. Instead of starting out to make a $45.00 hat, he started out to see how fine a hat he could make, using the fine soft fur from the belly of the beaver, and he made it the best he knew how, and gave it the intangible Knox touch. Then he figured up what it cost and set the price. As not all his customers were numbered among the aristocracy, and he must serve many of his patrons with a less costly hat, he set out to make another kind of hat, not by cheapening his finest hat, but by starting from the beginning with the next best grade of fur, and of all the other ma[ 25 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS terials, and making up another hat-literally a different hat, for a different need, but made throughout with the same skill and style as characterized the finer beaver hat for the finer trade. He then figured up the cost of this hat and set its price. And so on throughout his line: always he started with the market's need rather than the market price of hats, and always he succeeded in building into his hats, whatever their grade, that style and durability that had begun to be a synonym for his name. "One must be first in his line or stand aside," he said on many occasions, and to him being "fir st" meant to make the finest hats that could be made, so that all others would have to be compared to his. [26] ENTER ROBERT DUNLAP 'To Charles Knox's store, one day in 1857, came a woman with a boy of twelve. She was very poor and she asked Knox to give her boy a job. The boy, Robert Dunlap, looked bright and seemed eager to go to work, and Charles Knox promptly employed him. His duties were to make the fire in the morning, sweep out the shop, and run errands. He was to receive three dollars per week. Knox took a fancy to -him and gave him every opportunity to learn the business. Robert Dunlap was quick to learn. He had a distinct knack at selling and was soon elevated to the position of clerk. Rapidly he absorbed, not merely a knowledge of how to sell hats, but also the principles and policies which comprised Knox's business philosophy. An apt pupil, sitting under a master worthy of his respect and emulation! After serving Knox for several years, Dunlap went to him one day and asked for a raise. He [ 27 1 TWO FAMOUS HATTERS ba etig twelve dollars a week. He, wanted fifteen.- Knox may have been feeling a bit grumpy that day, or he may have failed to realize that young Dunlap was not the sort to be denied advancement. At any rate, he made the mistake of refusing the raise. "'Very well," Dunlap is said to have threatened, "I'll go into the business myself and sell more hats than you do." Whether this threat be truth or tradition, Dunlap left Knox and, with a partner by the name of Golding, went into the business of manufacturing caps and straw hats in Park Place under the firm name of Dunlap & Golding. Little did Charles Knox dream, when his clerk walked out of his store, that Dunlap would one day be his most aggressive competitor, outdistancing him-and every other hatter in New York-in point of retail sales in the metropolis, and that he would ultimately establish dealers all over America, and operate a large factory in Brooklyn. But we are getting ahead of our story. In '61 the Civil War had broken out. Being a thoroughly [28 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS patriotic citizen, and seeingr the need for sacrifice, at President Lincoln's first call for troops Charles Knox raised a hundred men from his own factory and formed a company. He paid for its equipment out of his own pocket and sent it off to Bull Run with the Eighth Regiment, his own son, Edward, serving as a Lieutenant. When some one remonstrated with him for sending the boy to war -Edward was then but nineteen years of ageCharles Knox replied, "If I had twenty sons I would send them all to the war!" Not content with what he had already done, Knox inaugurated a pension system for the wives and families of his men, financing it out of his own pocket, and then originated the famous "bounty system" by offering ten dollars to each of the first ten men who enlisted at the. New York recruiting station. Running a business in those hectic days of the war was trying enough, but fate had special tribulations in store for Charles Knox. News came from the battlefield that his son was missing after the battle of Gettysburg, in July, 1863. Vainly he tried to get news of the boy, but without suc[ 29 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS cess., so finally he set out from New York for the South to find his son, with that same singleness of purpose and calm faith in his ability to go through with his mission that he had shown as a lad of twelve starting out to walk to New York. It seemed a forlorn hope, but it was something that should be done, and in Charles Knox's code that was enough. He knew Lincoln-the great Emancipation President was a patron of his and had stopped at his store more than once to be fitted with a Knox hat. In Washington, therefore, he was able to arrange for a pass to take him through the lineseven the Confederate lines-on the peaceful mission of seeking his missing son. After several days of fruitless searching, Knox happened one morning to be passing, the cabin of an old black mammy. "What you-all lookin' fo', Massa? " asked the old negress. The father explained that he was searching for his -son, a Union officer, who had been reported seriously injured in the battle of Gettysburg and had disappeared. [30] e~' enaeie~ ra4-n ý1/(7 z< Pas~s i~ssued to Charles Knox and Robert Marshall to enter the Union Lines in July,- 1861. As he had no pen, Drake DeKay "cpainted" his signature with the point of his sword. TWO FAMOUS HATTERS "I's got a Yankee boy in here I dunno what to do with. He's plumb crazy," volunteered the black mammy, and invited Knox to enter the cabin.' rrhere, on a pallet of straw in the corner, lay Edward Knox, delirious, with a grievous bullet wound. Trhe grateful but anxious father bore his son back home where he was nursed back to health, though his wound troubled him somewhat in after years. It might be added parenthetically that at the close of the war Congress made Edward Knox a member of the Loyal Legion for bravery in action and he was given the rank of Colonel. KNOX9 S SHUTTERS GO UP MEANWHILE the Knox business had. suffered. So busily engaged in patriotic service had the elder Knox been that business had become of secondary importa~nce for the time being. Hence it was a shock to him when his bookkeeper, a Southern sympathizer who resented his employer's activities in behalf of the North, came to himi one morning and informed him that the busi[ 391 TWO FAMOUS HATTERS ness was insolvent; that there was a note of $2,500 due which could not be met. In such a case, according to the practice of that time, there was nothing to do but close the shop; so up went the shutters. For three days the shop remained closed. The president of the Park Bank, seeing the shutters up, stopped and asked Knox, "Charley, what does this mean?" When the hatter explained his position the banker told him to take his shutters down immediately and resume business; that he could draw on his bank for whatever money he needed. Thus happily came to an end the brief closing of Knox's business, but not without leaving a scar on the spirit of its founder. With the end of the war business gradually resumed its normal course and Knox found that his fame as a hatter had spread far beyond New York. His versatility in creating styles and his genius for getting that intangible thing, which for the lack of a more specific term we call "quality," into a hat had attracted the attention of men everywhere, until Knox was hatting every Presi[33 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS dent who entered the White House, and daily chatting with the great men of the nation as they frequented his shop on the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street. In the store were two Windsor chairs, one of which Charles Knox would occupy, and the other the distinguished visitor who wished to rest and talk a while. These two famous chairs held, most of the men who made the country's history, from Lincoln and Grant down. Nor did the fame of the business stop there. Foreign visitors had worn Charles Knox's hats home, where they were favorably noted, and Knox discovered to his surprise that he was becoming an international hatter, receiving orders for his hats from Cuba, France, Germany and South America. Personally he had come to be an outstanding figure in the life of New York, along with such men as Horace Greeley and A. T. Stewart and Robert Bonner. It is related that Stewart, always a simple soul, chafed under the formality of his mansion at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirtyfourth Street, with all its flunkies and its elabo[34] In this chair sat most of the Presidents and many of America's most famous men, while being hatted by Knox. 'TWO FAMOUS HATTERS rately served meals, and on Sunday nights when the servants were out he would ask Charles Knox to his home and the two men would slip out into the kitchen and get themselves bowls of bread and mimlk. Over this simple fare they would spend hours in soul-satisfying talk of the aff airs of the day. THE COLONEL STORMS A FASHION CENTER AGE was creeping upon the famous hatter and as he had now many outside interests (he was one of the largest property owners in the city, owning twenty-eight private houses, three hotels and a farm of thirty-three acres in the Bronx) he began to slow up in his management of the hat business. His son, now always spoken of as "Colonel" Knox, who had for years since the war been living in Europe, returned to take hold of the bu siness aggressively-ultimately almost too aggressively to suit his father, if we are to credit the reports that have come down to us of his taking over the 'management so completely as to leave the old gentleman little to do but come down to the store of a morning and sit by the stove reading his newspaper. Certainly he supplied a fresh stimu[.36 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS bous that gave point to the motto his father had adopted years before, Moveo et Proficio-"J move and progress." At that time a new shopping section was developing "uptown," centering around the fa~shionable Fifth Avenue Hotel at Twenty-third Street. if "Knox" was* to continue to set the style in mnen's tiles, he must be represented at this center of fashion. At least so young Colonel Knox reasoned. With that same directness that had been his father's outstanding characteristic, he proceeded, to use the words of a contemporary newspaper account, "to plant himself at the corner of Twenty-third Street in a luxuriant bazaar that excited the envy and the fears of a whole brigade of friends and rivals." But again we are getting ahead of our story. In the years that had intervened, Robert Dunlap, having graduated from the cap business, had gone into business for himself as a hatter, specializing in the making of fine derby hats. The quality of his derbies, and his genius for selling, had put Dunlap well up in the front rank as a hatter. Not only had he built a l'arge factory [837 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS but he had established himself firmly in the retail hat business in New York, and he was selling his hats through agencies in many of the large cities of America. One of his retail stores was the very one Colonel Knox had set his mind on having, the store under the Fifth Avenue Hotel at Madison Square. As the story runs, Dunlap was paying $2,500 per year for this store, and when his lease ran out the landlord informed him that the rent would be $10,000 per year in the future. While he was considering whether he would pay this fabulous rent, Colonel Knox stepped in and rented the store over his head! It is interesting to discover that in coming to the momentous decision to lease this store at so high a rental, with business men freely prophesying that such a rental would ruin any retail business, Colonel Knox fell back on the same reasoning that his father had used years before: "There is only one thing to do in New York," he is quoted as saying, "and that is, be the first in your line, or get out of the way for somebody else." This latter, Knox had no thought of doing. So [38] CELEBRATED HATS. Silk and Opera Hat Manufactory and Wholesale Department: 191, 193 & 195 Seventh Avenue, New York City. Felt Hat Factory: Straw Hat Factory: Cor. Park and Nostrand Aves,, Brooklyn. 132 & 134 South Fifth Ave., New York City HAT MANUFACTORY OF R. DUNL\P & CO- COR. PARK & NI)STRAND AVENUMS. IROOLY'N, N. Y. RETAIL STORES. 178 & 180 Fifth Ave., 179 Broadway, New York. Bet. 22d & 23d Sts., Now York. 914 Chostnut St., Philadolphla. 171 & 173 State St., Palmer House, Chicago. Robert Dunlap was a large space advertiser and believed in telling his sales story with pictures. TWO FAMOUS HATTERS "Knox's new Business Palace" was finished at a cost of $60,000 and opened for custom. "A splendid place of business 27 feet wide, 60 feet deep and 15 feet high," it was described in the announcements. Now that he was to be located in the city's fashion center, Colonel Knox had put a question to himself: "Why not take advantage of our new location and our reputation as hatters by adding ladies' hats to our line?" It seemed a logical step. And so, forthwith, he engaged a designer and on the opening of the new store surprised New York's fashionable set with a "stylish" line of millinery. Custom was so brisk that soon fourteen trimmer's were required to keep pace with sales. The move uptown and the adding of millinery to the Knox line demonstrated that, though of an entirely different temperament, Colonel Knox had his father's business sagacity. Once more he had planted the Knox business on the brink of the stream of fashion and taken full advantage of the opportunity it presented. The. Sunnyside Press, of 1880 gives a good picture of the Madison Square of the day, as well as [ 40 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS of the new head of the fast-growing Knox business: One of the best known figures on upper Broadway is E. M. Knox, the hatter. Tall, handsome, erect as an Indian, with a rather sharp face and the keen shrewd expression of his countenance, he is in all respects the typical American, and as such was pointed out in Egypt, in Paris and in London by foreigners who did not know him. His father is the oldest and best known hatter in the city, but it is to the son, Ed., that the city owes the unique and magnificent business which has been built up in a marvelously short time in the heart of the fashionable locality, there at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. If you stand there on the corner of Twentythird Street some afternoon in September when the early fall season is opening, you will catch the full tide of fashion and beauty as it sweeps across in a double stream and has to pass directly under Knox's windows. If you care to make the inquiry of some one who knows, you will be astonished to find how much of that human pageant owes its color, its style and its beauty to Knox. It was from Knox's doorway that the young Theodore Roosevelt used to survey Madison Square and the stream of humanity passing up and down Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Sometimes he would stand there for an hour at a time, [ 411] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS holding on to one of the awning rods, staring out over the Square, and Knox repeatedly suggested to one of his clerks that he go out and "tell young Roosevelt that door post will stay up all right w ithout him supporting it." But "young Roosevelt" was not supporting a door post. From the Knox doorway~he was studying the great American public, which in later years he was to prove he so well understood. DERBIES-"DUNLAP STYLE" PUT out of his Madison Square store, Dunlap did not waste any time in vain regrets. There were other stores;- and besides, were not his derbies more famous than Knox's? So Robert Dunlap went about his business, building, building, building. Not a manufacturing man himself, he nevertheless. had a knack of selecting men who could make hats, and of inspiring them to give their best. The Dunlap factory had more secret methods and more special processes than any other hat factory i~n America. The Dunlap derby was blacker than any other maker's, and better finished. Nor was any other [ 42 ]I TWO FAMOUS HATTERS derby its superior in style. Indeed, Dunlap set the style in derbies. It was common practice for other makers to wait for Dunlap's new spring or fall styles before going ahead with the manufacture of any derbies themselves. Their salesmen would call on the trade and take advance orders for derbies, sometimes for as many as five hundred or a thousand dozen on a single order, "To be Dunlap style," without even knowing what the Dunlap style was to be. The manufacturer taking such an order would gather all the advance information he could about the Dunlap line and prepare everything at his factory so that he could get into production quickly. Then he would send a man to some little town in Florida where the Dunlap line was shown two or three weeks earlier than it was offered to the New York trade, and this scout would telegraph the dimensions of the Dunlap derbies. Thus the new season would get under way! What was true of Dunlap was true also of Knox. Competing manufacturers waited for Knox styles, and took orders for "Knox style" hats that they had never seen. [43 A GREAT HATTER PASSES, BUT A GREAT TRADITION LIVES Wcan imagine the elder Knox, now no longer actively engaged in the administration of the business, but still "Knox the Hatter," watching the progress of his business, watching- the opening of the big Knox hat factory in Brooklyn in 1890, one of the largest in the world, and reading such glowing tributes as this penned by the editor of the Trade Reporter: The name and fame of Knox the hatter is coextensive with two hemispheres, and in all parts of the world a hat of his manufacture is pr~ima facie evidence of the good breeding and gentility of the wearer. His hats are recognized in London, Paris, on the Rhine, in classic Rome and under thie shadow of the Pyramids. The inhabitants of all countries and varied climes have learned to praise Knox for his incomparable "tiles," so jaunty, light, graceful and glossy in their appearance, while at the samne time they are aware of the genius that has inspired Knox ever since [44 TWO FAMOUS HATTERS he first commenced the manufacture of hats in New York, nearly, if not quite, half a century ago., Charles Knox is known and respected by the wealthy classes and well-to-do citizens, for he is the first man that brought the manufacture of silk hats to such a perfection that the business has ever since ranked as a high art. He has customners of acknowledged prominence in every leading condition of life, and in all sections of the United States. Every man that can afford to travel, of course, knows Knox, and as soon as he arrives in the metropolis his outfit thus completed, he is ready for presentation and for select occasions in the drawing-room, in the park, or en chevalier. All the distinguished men and dignitaries of the Nation do the same, thing-buy a "tile" from Knox. There are scores of individuals who will wear no other hats than those made by Knox, and the latter is hatter in ordinary to the best and most refined society. But as the elder Knox went about his daily life in his declining years, driving up to Central Park every morning (for he was passionately fond of horses and kept a fine stable in Tenth Street), and visiting the stores or the factory from time to time, he must have been somewhat piqued at the amazing success of his erstwhile handy boy [ 45 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS and clerk, Robert Dunlap, for Dunlap was building up an enormous business and, in point of retail hat sales in New York, was actually threatening to outdistance him. There was a grain of comfort, however, in the fact that his was honest competition. Dunlap business policies had been learned from Charles Knox. To them he was successfully adding the force and quality of his own ideas and personality, even as Colonel Knox was now doing in carrying on the Knox business. Charles Knox died in 1895, but so long had his son managed the business that there was no break at his passing. Besides, the Knox principles had developed into a tradition that was dependent on no single individual: they were ingrained in every worker in the Knox factory and every salesman in the Knox stores, of which there were now three in New York, the downtown store at Broadway and Fulton Street, the Madison Square store, and a new one at Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street. [46 ] A BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY D UR IN Gthe next few years the Knox and Dun - lap businesses fought a pitched battle. Colonel Knox, forceful, energetic, and nearly always sound in his ideas and judgments, built up a remarkable retail business in New York, and expanded it rapidly in a national way by contracting with high-class clothiers all over America to act as Knox Agents. But Robert Dunlap was no less aggressive. With three retail stores in New York, his sales kept climbing until he was selling more hats than any hatter in the city. Nor had he been any less aggressive in pushing his business nationally. There were now Dunlap Agencies in leading men's furnishing stores in nearly every city of importance. It was a strange battle for supremacy between two famous companies that were more logically [ 47 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS co-operators than competitors, for both had grown from the same root, and both were actuated by the same policies and principles. Neither began by saying: "How large a dividend can we earn this year?" but rather by asking, "How can we make finer hats-and sell more of them?" Robert Dunlap was a man-of singularly pleasing personality, genial and kindly. Hemadefriends of all with whom he came in contact, and in those days to make friends was to make sales. He seldom visited his factory, but when he did he usually treated everybody. He would have beer sent in f or the men and ice cream for the women. This of course always stopped production, until his visit was over; but it won the hearts of hi-s workers and made them responsive to his slightest request or suggestion. He knew nearly everyone who worked for him, and in particular knew every man in the Silk Hat Department, where -he had himself worked at the bench. All this had an important influence on the quality of the hats turned out at the Dunlap factory. As for Colonel Knox, his genius, like his father's, [ 48 ] COLONEL EDWARD M. KNOX TWO FAMOUS HATTERS seemed to be for printed publicity. In the first place, he was one of those rare souls who seem themselves to be news. Everything he touched turned to publicity, and if it refused to turn to publicity by itself, he helped it along! When news or prose failed. him, he was not above using poetry. Following is one of the poems he published as a Knox advertisement: Some poets live to win a name. Suppose they do, what matter? I am content to sing the fame Of Knox, the peerless hatter. His fame is known the World around. And I do not wish to flatter; But when a stylish hat is found It comes from "Knox the Hatter." Men save their money and their time, And that's a weighty matter When buying, mid the city's grime, By seeing Knox the Hatter. His prices also suit the times, His hats all faces flatter. They speak imore loudly than these rhymes, Ti praise of Knox the Hatter. [ 50]1 TWO FAMOUS HATTERS It was never personal publicity Colonel Knox sought, however, but publicity for the sake of the business. THE KNOX BUSINESS EXPERIENCES A SINKING SPELL IN the Fall of 1913, Colonel Knox, whose health had been none too robust since the war, began to fail and there came a period when the business began to show signs of decline. Finally he sold his interest and outside management was brought in. Unhappily the new management was more concerned with making profits than with maintaining traditions, and the business went through a sinking spell. Only the momentum of the Knox traditions, to which the workers in the Knox factories and the staffs in the retail stores still clung, and the staunch loyalty of Knox Agents all over America, carried it through until a second group, sympathetic with the fine principles that had governed the business from its beginning and loyal to the spirit of its founder, took over the business and headed it back on its true course. The men who now took charge sought counsel, [ 511 TWO FAMOUS HATTERS not from bankers or "experts," but from the past. They went back into the history of the business. They exam ined the methods and policies of Charles Knox, the founder. They analyzed the constructive genius of Colonel Knox, under whose able leadership it had grown so marvelously. They listened to the men and women in the Knox factories who had made Knox hats all their lives. They talked with the men in the Knox retail stores who had sold hats to the Presidents and other outstanding figures in American life-and still were serving them. They visited Knox Agents all over the country to get the benefit of their experience. The business was in very bad shape..and they faced the truth squarely and asked the counsel and cooperation of those who had helped to build and carry it -on. From that hour it began to move forward. Quality improved. Production increased. Knox Agents took new heart. Sales began to climb. The Knox business was in momentum again! Meanwhile,, Robert Dunlap had died and with the inspiration and genius of his leadership gone, the Dunlap business had al~so declined. As with [ 1W I OUTLINES OF SOME FAMOUS HEADS IT. S. GRANT GRlOVER CLJEVELAND) CHAS. A. DANA ROUT. 0. INGERSOLL GEN. PHIL.. SHERIDAN G EORGOE DEW lW CHAS. FROHNIAN. -JOS. IEFFEILSON WHITELAW tREED THEODORE ROOSEVELT EN R.1CO CA RUSO VICTOR 1HfERBERTI In the Knox files arc the "conforms" of maovy of the naation's most fa.o"OUs macn. TWO FAMOUS HATTERS the Knox business, only the Dunlap traditions, ingrained in the workers, and the loyalty of Dunlap Agents were keeping it going. It occurred one day to the men at the head of the Knox business that, rooted in the same traditions as they were, and responsive to the same kind of leadership as they naturally would be, the two businesses ought to grow together. The obvious thing would be to combine them, letting each line keep its identity but operating them as a single enterprise so far as production and management were concerned. It was the sort of thing Charles Knox would have done under the same circumstances, and done promptly and without hesitation, as he had always done the thing that seemed fitting and in line with the indomitable spirit of his motto"I move aid progress." Having the same keen appreciation of the fleetness of time that had motivated the Knoxes, father and son, and realizing that to act promptly for themselves was to act promptly and beneficially for the hundreds of Dunlap Agents whose prosperity was also involved, the officers of the com[54] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS pany lost no time in opening negotiations. Thus it transpired that in 1919 the Dunlap business was united with the Knox business, and it, too, was back on the straight track and in control of men who respected its traditions and had already demonstrated their sincerity of purpose. In spite of the brief period in both businesses when progress seemed to have stopped tempora-. rily, Knox and Dunlap hats had still held their own with the men whose patronage was most desirable and whose verdict established the mode. This was demonstrated by a count made at that time at the Bankers Club in New York. Of 1020O hats checked in the cloak, room, 51O were Knox hats, 200O were Dunlap hats, and the remaining 310 were scattered as to make. [ 55] PIONEERING IN CO-OPERATION A YEAR before these two famous hat companies were consolidated, the men at the head of the Knox business had taken a step which was destined to have a very important influence on both businesses, and to lead to developments of farreaching importance. At that time (it was in 1918) work in the Knox factory in Brooklyn, as in every other hat factory, was constantly being interrupted by "shop calls." This department or that would develop a grievance, real or imaginary, and work would stop until it could be adjusted. It might be only a matter of hours, but frequently it ran into days or weeks. Meanwhile, the company would suffer from the tie-up of that department, the workers would lose their wages, and in some cases Knox Agents would be seriously inconvenienced through disappointment in deliveries. Further[56] TWO- FAMOUS HATTERS more, all this tended to increase the cost of making hats, and it was bound to have anything but a beneficial influence on the workmanship. The officers of the company knew full well that while they might design hats of "Knox style," and buy the finest materials to put into them, the workmanship and finish which. distinguished Knox hats and caused them to hold their style, and give years of downright satisfaction to their wearers, could not be put in at the executive offices on the sixth floor of the Knox Building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street, New York. It would have to be put in at the factory in Brooklyn. One morning one of the executivesmade a remark that seemed to crystallize the whole problem. It was one of those off-hand observations, so simple and obvious, once uttered, that the wonder is it had not been thought of before. "I would suggest," he said, "that the workmen be given an opportunity to have some say about the hats that come out of our factory, and the conditions under which they are made." Out of this simple suggestion developed the [ 57] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS Knox Works Council,, which furnished a means for every worker, through representation, to obtain prompt consideration of any grievance. Instead of being obliged to issue a "shop call" that would mean a whole department stopping work until the matter was adjusted satisfactorily, perhaps with a loss of several days' pay to the workers and as many days' production to the company and its agents, under the new plan the, departmetwould go right on working while its representative on the Council called a meeting and stated the grievance. The workers found to their surprise, and greatly to their satisfaction, that their grievances were settled promptly-often within half an hour of the call for a Council meeting. If for any reason the decision of the Council (made up of an equal number of delegates representing the workers and the management), was delayed for 'Several days, it was made retroactive to the hour the meeting had been called. At first, from force of habit, "shop calls" occurred occasionally, but the workers soon came to realize that they coulI d safely leave their inter[ 58 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS ests in the hands of their representatives and go about their work with easy minds. In short, the Works Council soon developed as "the voice of the factory." Old Charles Knox had known how to get the loyalty and craftsmanship of his workers into his hats. He and they had talked everything over man to man and worked out their problems together. The new Works Council was, therefore, virtually a tie-back to the methods of the founder; it was the old Knox policy of directness in all dealings, brought down to date and adapted to modern requirements. Let there be a draft in the Forming Department that interfered with the work of the folks in that room, and the member of the Works Council from that department would bring it up at the first meeting of the Works Council and the Council would see to it that the management stopped that draft! Let the workers in any department become disgruntled over their rate of pay, and its representative would present the case to the Works Council. If it was apparent that the rate was out of line with rates in other departments, or with the same work in other factories, it would [ 59] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS be adjusted promptly. If there was a question as to how much the industry generally was paying for this same kind of work, representatives of the Works Council would be sent to Danbury and other hat-making centers to investigate wagesor working conditions if it happened to be the latter-and action would be taken based on their findings. Always, the matter was tackled immediately and settled promptly. THE STRAW HAT COUNCIL CHALLENGES THE ADVERTISING TH E Council was given access to the books, shown costs, and in general permitted to know everything necessary to a clear understanding of any situation which might affect wages or working conditions. It was kept informed as to the volume of business on hand so that it might estimate on the probability of steady employment for weeks or months ahead. Also, through it the workers were given an insight into the sales end of the business-the problem of creating styles that appeal to the public, and of advertising and selling these styles in sufficient volume to keep the [60] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS factory running at normal capacity. Nor was this done in a perfunctory way. Steps were taken to make the workers see that advertising and selling were as necessary to them as to the management, and they began to take a real interest in this side of the business, which they had previously regarded as no concern of theirs. One year the workers in the straw hat factory informed the management in no uncertain terms that they did not regard the straw hat advertising for the coming season (proofs had been shown them at a Council meeting) as "good enough." The management held up the advertisements and made the head of the advertising agency go over to the factory and face a third-degree grilling at the hands of the Straw Council. He was able to convince the workers that the advertisements were worthy of their mission, but had he failed, the advertisements would never have run! But once more we are ahead of our story. It was in 1919, just about a year after the Knox Works Council had been formed, that the Dunlap and Knox businesses were combined. Then in striking fashion the value of the spirit of confidence, [ 61 J TWO FAMOUS HATTERS and of respect for each other's rights and viewpoints, as represented by the Works Council idea, became apparent. No group of workers relishes the idea of having its factory, its very means of livelihood, sold over its head, without its leave. The workers in the Dunlap factory were no exception. They had been brought up on Dunlap traditions and to Dunlap traditions they naturally clung. They were not at all sure they wanted to work under Knox supervision; in fact, they were quite sure they did not. "Come over to the Knox factory and see just how we do things," they were invited. They came reluctantly, prepared to disapprove; but so sincere did they find the spirit of the place that their prejudices soon gave way to a desire to meet halfway a management which they were now convinced was willing to come a little more than its half of the way. And so it transpired that the best of the old Knox spirit and the best of the.old Dunlap spirit were gradually welded into a new spirit which soon became the controlling influence in the [62 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS manufacturing end of the business as well as in administration and sales. It was -not, however, until the liquidation period of 1921, following the "silk shirt boom" that the Works Council met its supreme test. Like many other industries, the hat industry' suddenly stopped dead. For two months the Knox factories were shut down. What hats merchants had on hand they were trying to sell, and they refused to buy more hats to retail at ten dollars-which was the minimum-because for the time being men would not pay ten dollars for a hat. THE WORKERS CUT THEIR OWN WAGES THE Knox Works Council was called together. The whole situation was explained. "There is no work because hats won't sell at ten dollars any more," it was told. "Most men won't pay more than seven dollars for. a hat this year." "How much of acut will that mean in the wholesale price?" the Council asked. "A cut of twenty-five dollars and fifty cents a dozen." [ 63 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS Materials had come down in price some, but to meet any such reduction meant a deep cut in wages. The Council faced the issue squarely. Committees were appointed to go over the wage scale in every department of the business and to study the wages in other industries where wage scales had already been adjusted. As soon as these committees were ready with their reports the pruning process started, and before it was finished the workers had voted to make reductions in their own wages ranging from six percent to as high as fifteen percent-reductions far more drastic than the management would have dared even suggest. The factory was able to open at once, and the business began to prosper. The Works Council had saved the day for the workers, and for the company, and had served the Knox and Dunlap Agents by giving them hats to sell at seven dollars when seven-dollar hats were the only kind that would sell in quantities. AGENTS ARE INVITED TO A CONVENTION So successful had the Works Council Plan proved in solving the problems connected with the manu[64 ] TWO FAMOUS H-ATTERS facturing end of the business that it suggested another and even more revolutionary idea. If the workers could help so much in putting Knox and Dunlap quality into the hats they ma-de, why should not the merchants all over America who had the job of selling these famous hats help to decide the styles and grades and colors of the hats they were to sell, and have a voice in formulating sales and advertising policies? "Why not invite. the Agents to come to New York and talk over this idea?" someone suggested. With the same fine disregard for that progressretarding word, "sometime," that the elder Knox had manifested on s o many occasions, the executives of the company decided to carry out the idea at once. "If it w;ill help to make it easier to sell Knox and Dunlap hats, the sooner we get under way the better," they argued. Invitations were sent out forthwith. Competitors smiled and predicted that not a corporal's guard would respond to the invitation, for every merchant was expected to pay his own expenses. But they reckoned without a full real[ 65 J TWO FAMOUS HATTERS ization of the progressiveness and loyalty and shrewd business acumen of merchants of the calibre of those who held the Knox and Dunlap franchises. For when the appointed day came-January 17, 1922-there sat down around the conference table seventy-four Dunlap and Knox Agents. The story of that first convention, which lasted two days, can be told in three sentences: They came. They caught the spirit of the enterprise. They put their shoulders to the wheel. That was in January. Spring sales in Dunlap and Knox stores all over America showed the stimulating effect of their labors. Meanwhile, certain machinery had been created at the convention which was continuing its influence. An advisory Council of five members had been elected to consider all problems that might come up between this first conference and the second one, scheduled for the following January, and this committee took hold with enthusiasm. Thus was launched one of the most unique business associations in the history of American business, composed of a, group of broad-gauge, far-seeing merchants who had agreed to sit in [66] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS conference with the men who were making the merchandise they were to sell, for the purpose of helping them eliminate the expense and waste and lost motion of the old methods of manufacturing and selling, and the sources of irritation between the company and themselves. WHEN AN AGENT WAS NOT AN AGENT NOR was the situation without its irritations. Neither the Knox nor the Dunlap Agency franchises had been properly administered by the respective companies. Oddly enough, one suffered from too much of the very thing the other lacked -stability. The granting of Knox Agency franchises had developed into something akin to a game of checkers. The hatter on the east side of Main Street had the Knox Agency in the Fall, but if the hatter across the street was willing to place a larger order for Spring, Spring saw Knox hats in the window on the west side of the street, while perhaps the following Fall saw them back in the first store, or in a store farther up the street. Such instability was unfair to the merchants and bad for the company and its reputation. [671 TWO FAMOUS HATTERS On the other hand, Du 'nlap Agencies were entirel~y too firmly rooted. If a Dunlap'Agent bought two dozen hats a season, he was allowed to hold the Dunlap Agency franchise against all competition. This was manifestly unfair, not only to the Dunlap business, but to the more progressive merchants in many communities who desired the Dunlap franchise and were ready to back it with the necessary sales and advertising energy to develop a large volume of sales in their communities. Tackling this problem in a spirit of fairness, the company and the- Advisory Council of Knox and Dunlap Agents developed a Code of Ethics which was calculated to protect the interests of each in the interest of all, and which is today unique among business agreements. A permanent form of organization was also worked out to be presented at the next Convention. The second year one hundred and twenty-three Knox and Dunlap Agents paid their fares to New York, some of them coming clear from the Pacific Coast. They came because they were impressed with the sincerity of -purpose of the, company's executives and the obvious advantages of a plan [ 68 ] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS which gave them an opportunity to invest their knowledge and their ideas in the upbuilding of their own hat departments at the point where it would have the most definite and beneficial influence on their sales-the point where decisions as to style, quality and price were made for the coming season. A year later, nearly. two hundred merchants responded to the invitation and the Joint Council of Knox and Dunlap Agents was established as a national institution, well officered, and made up of what has been referred to as "the most intelligent body of retail merchants in America." Once more Charles Knox's motto, Moveo et Proficio, had been given expression in a pioneer movement worthy of the best traditions of the two famous businesses. [69 ] A LEAF FROM THE WORLD WAR NOTE-BOOK ONE of the problems the company faced, following the World War, was the serious one of keeping up the standard of Dunlap and Knox hats with material and labor prices soaring to heights that would have made the founders gasp. The new president of the Knox Hat Company, who had represented the hat industry on the War Industries Board during the World War, entertained a growing conviction that the simplification principle developed during the War could be applied to the hat business in peace times. But this conviction was balanced by a fear that retailers would be unalterably opposed to any plan that hinted at reducing the range of styles and colors from which they might make their selections. At that time there were 9820 different numbers of soft hats alone in the Knox and Dunlap lines, [70 ] TWO FAMNOUS IIATTER'S and probably the number would have remained at that figure for some years-if indeed the line might'not have grown even larger-ýhad it not been for the Advisory Council. At one of the early meetings of the council a merchant from the West protested against the policy of making so many hats. "It takes me two or three times as long to make my. selections as it should," he said. "I confine my purchases to six styles in ten colors. Why should I have to spend my time looking at several hundred hats? Besides, if you made fewer styles your manufacturing and selling costs would be lower and you could give better values for the money. This was wholly unexpected, coming from a retailer. But more surprising yet, it seemed to voice the thoughts of a number of the members of the Joint Council. Instead of an avalanche of objections, the suggestion was met with an attitude of open-minded inquiry. That inquiry developed into a program of simplification and the Knox and Dunlap lines became pioneers in simplification in the field of men's hats and caps. [71] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS Once again competitors smiled when it was announced that these famous lines were to be ",simplified." But again the fundamental soundness of an idea, put to work -promptly and with singleness of purpose (to keep costs down in the interest of all- concerned) sent the business forging ahead and set a new example for the entire industry. And once again the policy of talking things over with the men 'Who sold Dunlap 'and Knox hats proved its value, for without the loyal cooperation-and in some cases the- very real sacrifices-of Dunlap and-Knox Agents, it would have been impossible to apply the simplification principle to a business as complex as the hat business, and with so many years of firmly rooted custom to overcome. It was the realization of that sound old adage of retailing, "The profit is in selling the twelfth in the dozen" that worked the miracle. Knox and Dunlap Agents everywhere came to realize that the fewer styles they carried, within reason,, the more likely they would be to sell the twelfth hat in every dozen, and the less they would suffer from left-overs of odd styles and colors and- weights. [ 72] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS And so it has transpired that from nearly ten thousand numbers in 1922, the lines have been gradually reduced to under two thousand. From an infinite variety of styles, colors and weights, the Joint Council selects certain "feature" hats each season, and at least half of the factory production is confined to these feature hats. This means tremendous economies in production. It means the release of many thousands of dollars formerly required to carry even small stocks of thousands of numbers. It means price advantages in purchasing raw materials in great volume, and the turning of this raw material stock several times as fast. It means a satisfactory profit to the Knox Hat Company while enabling it to make and sell Knox and Dunlap Agents a better hat for less money. And perhaps it should be brought out at this point that the officers of the Company conceive their first duty to be the making of a fair profit, not only for the sake of the stockholders, but for the benefit of the workers in the Knox factories and of Knox and Dunlap Agents. The workers can hope for steady work at good wages [73] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS only as the company prospers, and as for the Knox and Dunlap Agents, of what avail for them to invest their precious energy and their advertising dollars and the reputation of their stores in establishing ever so famous a line of hats in their communities if the company behind it is not growing along with them and earning a profit sufficient to insure its permanency and to encourage its progress? A DIVIDEND IS DECLARED AND this brings us to the concluding chapter of this simple narrative of two famous hatters. After a long up-hill fight to re-establish the Knox and Dunlap businesses on the sound principles on which they were founded, with the co-operation of the men and women of the Knox organization and the loyal support of Knox and Dunlap Agents all over America, on May 1st, 1926, the company paid its first common stock dividend since 1913. The dividend checks themselves were comparatively small but their significance was. great, for they were concrete evidence that two fine old businesses, having flourished in an earlier day and languished for a while, had taken firm root [74] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS again and were once more flourishing to the profit of all concerned. Today as fine-if not finer--hats are being made in the Knox factories in Brooklyn as ever bore the Knox and Dunlap labels, and perhaps it should be mentioned parenthetically that, with the exception of polo helmets, every hat in both lines, including women's hats, is made in the company's own factories, under as fine conditions as those prevailing in any hat factory in America. And now what? Forward again! Having gone back to Yesterday to find the principles that have brought the Knox and Dunlap names back to the prestige they enjoyed in earlier generations, those responsible for the administration of the business are now looking toward Tomorrow. They are taking steps to insure the future of the business, that it may continue to prosper and to contribute to the growth and progress of Knox and Dunlap Agents and the welfare of the men and women who make Knox and Dunlap hats. A research fund, similar to the fund established by the United States Steel Corporation for research in steel, has been established [75] TWO FAMOUS HATTERS by the company to insure the continued leadership of Knox and Dunlap hats in the years to come. Fur will be studied scientifically, as will fabrics and straw and leather and dyes, and everything which enters into the making of a hat, not overlooking the processes and temperatures employed. Rule-of-thumb will be challenged at every step and science substituted for guess-work, all to the end of producing finer hats at lower cost. Important as is this research in itself, however, its real significance lies in this: that it symbolizes the revival of the spirit of the founders of these two famous businesses. It means that in the years to come, as in years gone by, leadership in hats will center around the two fine old names, known the world over for more than three generations"Knox" and "Dunlap" [76] 'K. ON js;in Du I L? DNLAP:L II X` / NOX KNX - \ KO I~I KAX J KN ft DrNLAUN LA DD.A -KNO Q\ [NOX 'KNOX' /KIN D L'N\P 2' UPLAki TNK\\J DLNLAP, LflJ'Lj KDU K LQ 1% pi )u~-u -D AL JN 0~3 ~iN 0)X NI-A 17ý L~, p ýIJN~ K!,~ r~~ V Isi * 1/:_1.j Ft;-r ci 1: ___I.~~a)____~ ~-0-;0. l~r; * 1,.-"ii0 )~