Beaver Felt Top Hat
Hat-making may
have been the first colonial American ‘cottage industry’ to grow into a business
that employed people in small factories.
(This assumes that ship-building cannot be called a cottage
industry.) Europeans played a large role
in this American development.
Hats being worn
by men in Europe became fashionable in the early 16th
Century (and by women, soon thereafter).
Hats became status symbols. The
bigger and fancier was the thing worn on top of the head, the more status the
wearer had. If someone didn’t wear a
hat, then that someone was probably a pauper or slave and certainly someone who
didn’t need to be greeted in public.
It was learned
by hat-makers that water animals, mainly beaver, muskrats, and otters, had
water-repellant furs that held up better in rainy and snowy weather. This meant that people who wore hats made
from the fur of water animals were not forced to stay indoors during bad
weather and could go about in public.
This knowledge led to severe reduction in the beaver population of Europe by the
beginning of the 17th Century (and also drove up the price of hats).
When European
nations began founding colonies along the east coast of North
America in the early 17th Century, it was discovered
that beaver were abundant in the northern colonies and in Canada. This led to a fur trade with Indians and also to
further colonization. The hat-makers in Europe
wanted to buy pelts that hadn’t had the fur shaved from them because there was
more money to be made in doing it themselves than in paying someone else to do
it. (They claimed to do a better job,
anyway.)
There were a
few hat-makers among the colonials who settled in North America. They were aware there was money to be made in making felt from water animal pelts, which they knew how to do. The American colonial cottage industry of
hat-making was born and soon grew. By
the 1720s, more than 10,000 beaver hats were being made each year in New
York and New England. This led to the Company of Felt-Makers in London
proposing in 1731 and persuading Parliament in 1732 to pass the Hat Act, which
forbade colonial exportation of hats (even to other colonies). It required a seven
years' apprenticeship
for hat-makers, excluded blacks from working as hat-makers (which prevented slave
labor from being used), and limited each colonial manufacturer to two apprentices. Some colonial hatters got around this by
labeling their hats as ‘London-made,’ while others simply shipped their
products to France. Disobedience eventually caused the law to
fall by the wayside.
Turning four
pounds of beaver fur into one pound of felt was a lengthy process. Each pelt had to be ‘de-haired,’ which was
shaving the fur off the hide. Dirt had
to be removed from the shaved fur and tangles unsnarled. The finished result was pounded or kneaded
into a mass and boiled. These steps were
repeated several times, until the felt was thick enough that it did not tear
when handled. (Sometimes dye was added
to insure a uniform color.) After that,
the felt was pulled over a cylindrical block and allowed to stiffen into
shape. The brim of the hat was formed by
pushing the block down onto a wooden surface, spreading the bottom part of the
felt out from the hat, and fixing it to the wooden surface. The
desired round or oval shape of the brim was then formed by trimming the outer edge of the felt.
The final steps in the process were adding a band around the hat, just
above the brim, and brushing the hat to get a shiny surface.
The water in
which the fur was boiled had mercury added to it. This speeded up the process of making felt
because the fur had to be boiled fewer times.
However, hatters breathing toxic mercury fumes in poorly ventilated
workrooms led to the hatters losing control over some muscles, to their
stumbling, having slurred speech, and visibly twitching. If they kept at the job for a few years, they
lost the power of concentration and became easily confused. The phrase ‘mad as a hatter’ was not a
literary flight of fancy. It was real
description.
LINKS
http://www.davidwebbfowler.com/2012/08/colonial-occupation-wheelwright.html
http://www.davidwebbfowler.com/2012/01/sons-of-liberty-occupation-brickmaker.html
http://www.davidwebbfowler.com/2011/11/sons-of-liberty-occupation-school.html
http://www.davidwebbfowler.com/2012/10/colonial-occupation-saddle-and-harness.html
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