This presidential campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1872. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign medals. The outer brass rim is ringed with 21 stars and inscribed with the date 1872.
Obverse: Bust of Horace Greeley facing right. Legend: HORACE GREELEY/1872.
Reverse: Bust of Benjamin Brown facing right, the legend reads: B. GRATZ BROWN/1872.
This presidential campaign badge was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1868. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign badges.
Obverse: Tintype photograph of Ulysses S. Grant in brass housing, the legend around the rim reads: OUR CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT.
Reverse: Tintype photograph of Schuyler Colfax in brass housing, the legend around the rim reads: FOR VICE PRESIDENT.
This medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1860. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign medals.
Obverse: Tintype photograph of Ulysses S. Grant, labeled “GRANT.” The legend around the rim reads: FOR PRESIDENT.
Reverse: Tintype photograph of Schuyler Colfax, labeled “COLFAX.” The legend around the rim reads: FOR VICE PRESIDENT.
This presidential campaign badge was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1864. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign badges.
Obverse: Tintype photograph of George B. McClellan in a brass frame. The frame has two shields flanking the photograph. Legend reads: FOR PRESIDENT G. B. McCLELLAN.
Reverse: Tintype photograph of George H. Pendleton. The legend reads: FOR VICE PRESIDENT GEO. H. PENDLETON.
This presidential campaign badge was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1864. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer, and is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign badges. The badge is holed at the top so it could be worn on an article of clothing.
Obverse: Photograph of Abraham Lincoln, labeled “A. Lincoln.” Housing reads: PAT. APR. 2.1861.
Reverse: Photograph of Andrew Johnson labeled “Johnson.” Housing reads: PAT. APR. 2.1861.
This unfinished campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1892.The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign medals. This medal is unfinished, as there is no reverse side.
Obverse: Bust of Grover Cleveland facing left. The legend reads: CLEVELAND & STEVENSON 1892.
This presidential campaign badge was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1864. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign badges. This badge has a hook on the top allowing it to be worn.
Obverse: Tintype of Abraham Lincoln labeled “A. LINCOLN.” The legend reads: “FOR PRESIDENT 1864.”
Reverse: Tintype of Andrew Johnson labeled “A. JOHNSON.” The legend reads: “FOR VICE PRESIDENT 1864.”
This presidential campaign badge was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company around 1868. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign badges.
Obverse: Tintype photograph of Horatio Seymour, labeled “H. SEYMOUR.” Legend reads: OUR CHOICE FOR PRESIDENT.
Reverse: Tintype photograph of Francis Blair labeled “F.P. BLAIR.” The legend around the rim reads: FOR VICE PRESIDENT.
This presidential campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1872. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including and campaign medals. This medal has a hole so that it could be worn.
Obverse: Bust of Horace Greeley, facing forward. Legend: FOR PRESIDENT HORACE GREELEY.
Reverse: Labeled photographs of Greeley and Benjamin Brown set into the medal. There is a spread-winged eagle at the top, with the legend “President” and “VICE PRES’T.”
This presidential campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1872. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including campaign medals. The medal is holed at the top so it could be worn.
Obverse: Bust of Ulysses S. Grant facing right. Legend: FOR PRESIDENT, U.S. GRANT.
Reverse: Spread-winged eagle with shield, clutching a laurel branch and three arrows in its talons. Legend: FOR VICE PRESIDENT H. WILSON 1872.
This campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1868. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign medals.
Obverse: Busts of Horatio Seymour and Francis P. Blair, Jr. facing left. The legend reads: SEYMOUR & BLAIR 1868.
Reverse: The rim has a wreath around it, the legend reads: GENERAL AMNESTY, UNIFORM CURRENCY, EQUAL TAXES & EQUAL RIGHTS.
This "Tom Mix" style cowboy hat made by the John B. Stetson Company dates from 1910 to 1930. The huge ten-gallon Stetson hat was Tom Mix's trademark. He was the top cowboy movie star of American silent films, known for his daring stunts and his equally famous elaborate cowboy outfits. More than any other star before 1930, Tom Mix had great influence on western wear.
Tom Mix was born on January 6, 1880 in Mix Run, Pennsylvania. His given name was Thomas Hezikiah Mix, but when he enlisted in the Army in April 1898, he listed his name as Thomas E. Mix. Mix appeared in over three hundred western films until his movie career ended when silent films were replaced by talking films. He then worked in rodeos and circuses until his death in 1940 from a freak automobile accident.
The average cowboy wore a hat called a "JB," which stood for John B. Stetson, a hatter who started his company in 1865. He built one of America's most well known and successful businesses and created hats that stood for innovation, quality, and durability. This cowboy hat is one of the styles that the John B. Stetson Company was known for producing. It is made of an off-white felt with a matching ribbon band and measures seven inches high by fourteen inches wide by eighteen inches deep.
Deck hands working aboard most commercial fishing vessels require protective clothing from head to toe. Non-slip, waterproof footwear is essential, and on the Alaska Ocean factory trawler, the deck hands, as well as the people who work in the factory, wear “Xtratuf” boots. Manufactured in the United States, these neoprene boots are made for “severe fishing, farm, and work conditions.” This pair was worn by a deck hand aboard the Alaska Ocean in summer of 2007.
The Buckeye State was built at Shousetown, Pa., south of Pittsburgh. In 1849 the hull was completed and hauled up the Ohio River to Pittsburgh to be finished. Under the supervision of David Holmes, the Buckeye State was completed in February 1850. It was owned and operated by the Pittsburgh & Cincinnati Packet Line, which ran it regularly on the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The company owned six or seven steamers at a time, and ran daily departures between the two cities. By the mid-1840s the Pittsburgh & Cincinnati Packet Line was praised by a Pittsburgh newspaper editor as “the greatest convenience . . . ever afforded the citizens on the banks of the Upper Ohio.”
On May 1, 1850 the Buckeye State left Cincinnati for Pittsburgh and completed the trip in a record 43 hours. Under Capt. Sam Dean, the steamer made 24 stops along the route, needing coal once and wood three times. One hundred years later, the Buckeye State still held the record for the fastest trip ever made by a steamboat between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.
In 1851, showman P. T. Barnum organized a race between the Buckeye State and the Messenger No. 2 as a publicity stunt to advertise Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind’s American tour. Steamboat racing was growing in popularity, and so a race was the perfect promotion. Although Lind and Barnum were aboard the Messenger No. 2, the Buckeye State won the race. The Buckeye State continued its service up and down the Ohio for six more years until it was retired and dismantled in 1857.
The weather deck on a factory trawler like the Alaska Ocean can be a dangerous place, especially when the huge net is being launched or hauled aboard. While mechanical winches do the heavy lifting, deck hands have to be present during such operations to attach or change cables, to secure or launch the trawl doors, to open the cod end of the net into the fish bins in the hold, and to accomplish a range of other tasks accurately and efficiently. To protect themselves while working on the deck, fishermen wear hard hats, earplugs, and other gear.
This hard hat was worn by Alaska Ocean deck hand Matt Prebezac in 2007. Like other fishermen aboard, he customized the standard white hard hat so there would be no confusion over which hat to grab when the call came to report to the deck. Using a black permanent marker, he wrote the words “Rock Star” on the back of the hat. This ensured it wouldn’t be mistaken for his buddy Ben Boyok’s hat, which was adorned with the profile of a hawkeye, the team mascot of the University of Iowa, in Ben’s home state. Throughout the 2007 season, the Rock Star and the Iowa hawkeye, with four other deck hands, a lead fisherman, and a deck officer, worked 12-hour shifts in two teams.
Pencil drawing by Rube Goldberg for the single cell cartoon As long as they put sandwiches, toothbrushes, cake and collars in that wax paper, why not go still further? Undated.
This drawing pokes fun at the idea of keeping everything sanitarily wrapped with the use of products like wax paper.
A sample book of machine-made lace, French, 2nd half 19th century. From: J. Gaillard, Pere et Fils. Saint-Pierre-lez-Calais, France. Blue cloth covered volume, 19.25” L x 12” W x ¾” D; Embossed gold lettering and border on front cover. Interior of 26 blue paper leaves with pasted in samples of machine-made lace in various styles, sizes, mostly black or white. More than one sample per page; each paper leaf has samples on both sides. Each sample has a small paper tag in the upper right corner with a style number and price per yard. Exquisite examples of Leavers-machine made lace trimmings for apparel and furnishing uses. The U.S. Leavers lace industry grew after the tariff on imported Leavers machines was removed for several months by the Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909.
Carved from the teeth of captured sperm whales, whale stamps were used to record the type of whale and number of barrels of oil they yielded.
The stamps were inked onto the page of whaleship logbooks or sailors’ journals, with an empty space in the whale’s body for writing in the number of barrels. This example in the form of a sperm whale is decorated with steel pin heads and a turned handle.
This Thai passport was seized in the well-publicized 1995 El Monte, Calif., sweatshop raid. The passport is part of a larger Smithsonian collection of artifacts documenting apparel industry sweatshops, focusing on the El Monte operation (72 workers were discovered working as slaves). With a legitimate U.S. visa, the passport looks official. In fact, the El Monte operators doctored a real passport, inserting a new photo into someone else's document, in order to smuggle workers into the country.
Recruited from Thailand, the El Monte workers were tricked into accepting employment by misrepresentations of their future working and living conditions. They were told they would sew in a clean factory, receive good pay, and have the weekends off. They were even shown photographs of company parties and outings to Disneyland. After signing contracts (indenture agreements) committing themselves to repay 120,000 baht (about $5,000 in 1997 dollars), they were smuggled into the United States on fraudulent passports.
On arrival, the sweatshop operators confiscated the passports and the workers were forced to sew 18 hours a day seven days a week. The debt, a guard force, and threats of physical harm to the workers and their families in Thailand discouraged them from escaping. Although the physical confinement of the work force was unusual, many aspects of the business, such as recruiting and smuggling workers, are relatively common. Less enslaving forms of debt peonage occur surprisingly often in some Asian immigrant communities.
Sweatshops occur in many sectors of manufacturing, but are most often associated with the garment industry. While garments are designed and marketed through big name companies, assembly is often left to contract and sub-contract operations. In these small shops, where profits are razor thin and competition is excessive, abuses are rampant.
John L. Lewis, one of America's foremost labor leaders, wore this badge at the 1936 United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) convention. It is a metal gold-colored pin with "President" printed in blue. A red, white, and blue ribbon attaches badge to pin. The badge features a gold-colored relief of the U.S. Capitol Building with an eagle perched on a shield. “UMW ORG 1890” is printed in blue at the bottom.
Born in an Iowa coal-mining camp, Lewis went to work in the mines as a teenager. He rose quickly as a labor leader, becoming president of the UMWA in 1920, and later helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Lewis led a successful struggle to organize industrial workers, improving wages, safety, and benefits.