Business & Finance: 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 7⅛. Among average size takers are Calvin Coolidge and Al Jolson. John D. Rockefeller Sr. wears a 7½ John D. Rockefeller Jr. a 7⅜. The largest hat ever made was a special order from a Ringling Brothers Giant, who weighed 480 pounds and took an 8⅞. 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.