Celebrated in Chicago last week was the 50th anniversary of the best-known name in men's clothing—Hart Schaffner & Marx. Starting with a banquet, ending with a theatre party, the celebration provided a happy opportunity for more than 200 big retailers from all sections to mix fun with business, for the occasion coincided with the opening of the buying season for autumn lines. Much was the talk of rising prices in both woolen goods (up 33%) and tailored product (up 10% to 15%). Serious were the discussions of trends in colors (gayer) and styles (toward draped models). Hart Schaffner & Marx's Golden Jubilee was pushed for its full promotional value but it also had genuine historical interest.
The old clothing company is credited with having been the first in the trade to go in for national advertising (1897), first to adopt an "all-wool" policy (1900), first to abolish contract homework (1910), first to sign a collective bargaining agreement (1911), first with the camel's hair coat (1912), first to guarantee color-fastness (1915). Stressed particularly last week was the company's 26 years of industrial peace since it started to deal with Sidney Hillman's Amalgamated Clothing Workers, potent supporter of John L. Lewis's C. I. O. Laborite Hillman, who got his start as an agitating cutter in the Hart Schaffner & Marx shops in Chicago, attended the Jubilee banquet, was snapped exchanging toasts with Hart Schaffner & Marx's President Mark Winfield Cresap.
"He was a rotten cutter," chuckles President Cresap.
No kin of the company's founders or of anyone else in the cloak & suit trade, President Cresap traces his line back to Maryland in 1710 and thence to Yorkshire, England. He is ashamed of one of his doughty ancestors who was tried for "inhuman activities" in the form of scalping an Indian.
Though 75% of the stock in Hart Schaffner & Marx is still owned by the founders' heirs (another 15% by officers and employes) the only Hart Schaffner or Marx active in the business today is Vice President & Secretary Abraham S. Hart, son of one of the two brothers who really started the business. The Brothers Hart, Max and Harry, were German Jews from Eppelsheim who had been taken by their parents to the U. S. with eight other children before the Civil War. Vice President Hart recounted last week how the twelve big & little Harts, upon debarking in Manhattan after a 60-day crossing in a sailing vessel which caught fire twice, marched into the first restaurant they spotted. Finding the only meat available was ham, they all marched out again.
Max and Harry Hart throve on the strenuous Chicago pace, opening a small clothing store in Chicago in 1872. When an out-of-town merchant admired their stocks, the Hart boys offered to supply him with a few suits, a move which soon led to the establishment of a wholesale house, one of their backers being a relative named Marcus Marx, who had run a general store in Hastings, Minn. Aside from drawing down profits, that was all that Marx ever had to do with Hart Schaffner & Marx.