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The Hoovers, of course, consider their sweeper the best of all. They have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars finding out just where dirt accumulates in carpets and the best way of getting such dirt out of carpets. And they have their machine to get rid of that dirt. Many a judge of housework has approved the Hoover. Thousands have bought it. It had never been entered in a contest, before the Sesquicentennial Exposition, without gaining the best prize offered. These tests and exploits are described in a volume, Hoover—The Story of a Crusade.
So there was indignation in the Hoover plant at Canton, Ohio, when the Sesquicentennial Exposition managers gave the grand prize to the Eureka and the secondary gold medal to the Hoover. "There was knavery in the awarding," said Hoover men, and their lawyers brought suit, alleging that the Exposition managers unexpectedly changed the rules of their carpet cleaner contest, that they unexpectedly changed their jury of award, that an award of a gold medal to Eureka had been wrongly changed to the award of the grand prize. The Eureka Co. has done damage to the Hoover concern reads the bill of complaint, "by false advertisements and statements which have been widely circulated by the [Eureka] company in this and foreign countries to the effect that the [Hoover and Eureka] machines had been judged in competition by one or more fair, impartial and competent juries, with exhaustive tests and detailed examinations of the performance, construction and design of both machines, and that the machine [Eureka] had been found to be superior and had been awarded a grand prize by the Exhibition Association." The Hoover Co. wants the Federal Court to reverse the Exposition prizes.
The Eureka Co. has not yet had opportunity to present in court the excellencies of their cleaner, nor the Exposition managers to explain the confusion in making the awards.