The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-06-29
PANAMA HATS.
THE EXTRAORDINARY RAGE
 FOR THEM JUST NOW.
All About How They Are Made, and Why Many of Them are so
 Costly.

of the Treasury, recently paid that mucl for an extra fine Panama, and reckone' moreover that he had made good bar
 gain.
 King Edward VII. also cheerfully pal
 a Bond Street merchant siso to secur the best Panama In London, while Jea'
 dc Reszke. the noted tenor, has paid m | ton-notch price--something under xooe- | to procure d similar object in America
 Ex-Mayor Van Wyck of New fork, chuckling over his success in securing Panama which dealers have told nim ! superior in quality to either King Eu
 ward,s or the one owned by Jean q | Reszke. He only paid $50.
 | These instances of extravaganza are no mentioned as a reflection upon the perpe | trators, but merely to illustrate to wna | extent has spread the Panama hat craze | ono of the most expensive fashions evei adopted by men. It IS expensive, because
 A Panama of even medium quality may
 not he had for less than $25, and If you 1 airlf |, have one that may be tucked away lnra vest pocket like lead pencil or 1 sucped through 8 finger ring, the price l ia to most persons prohibltive. In spite of this costliness, however, Fan anna hats are being dispatched from Soutn America, absolutely in ship loads, and about half the population of Ecuador if lenraged in supplying hat luxuries for tho men of Yankeedom.
 Prepare for Craze. The craze began last year, and appeared to be only transient, but the enterprisine merchants of the big cities foretoid that this summer would find demand far greater than the supply, and they accord insly rut m their orders about six mon-ss ago.
 Since then the Panama hat industry has became more lucrative than any oth- CT in that part of South America adjoin- Ing the isthmus, and, with the prospects of making fortune in few years. naay planters have abandoned the raising of coffee and rice.
 The mountain passes of the Andes. from Chimborazo northward, teem day and night with long columns or pack mules and OK carts bearing their precious burden to Panama. which is theyciearins- house for hats.
 The streets of Panama itself are thanked with the establishments of hat brokers.
 Tn all the pages of history you wall, per haps. find no account of a fad that was at the same time so costly as tnis one, and vet so generally. adopted, not even 
 courtiers trod the earth.
 In their heyday a considerable sum of money was no doubt paid for the pictur- esdue "Gainsborough." expensively deco rated, but it Is safe to say that not even the extravagant Louis XIV. paid for his headdress the price of the best Panama.
 Tn our time It has been the exclusive privilege of women to spend large sums of money on hats, and it Is not unconn- mon to hear of Parisian creation" sell ing for $1 GOO. With the fashion nowadays of occasionally wearing diamonds or other precious gems on a headdress, there is practically no limit to the depth that a woman might plunge in this luxury
 The fad of wearing real lace that Is af- fected today Is also a costly one. A smartly dressed woman, whose ambition Is to stay in the swim of society, will often wear two or three yards of Irish point lace that costs perhaps $4O0 yard. It Is this sort of thing that gives a father or husband heart disease" tragedy that has been 50 useful to joke writers and knock-about comedians.
 New Butts of Humor.
 But .le tables are reversed and humor- ists to be up to date must reglld one of their stock commodities. It is the woms sn who may gasp with astonishment when the head of the house comes home with a little wlsp of straw which he carefully procalms has cost him several hundreds of dollars Not only that. but he has the effrontery to boast of the purchase, and goes strutting about because Brown or Jones has Panama hat that is woven In two pieces, while his, proud man, has never a seam.
 At first sight the Panama hat craze would appear to be a lavish folly taken up by tk e Americans because of their wild desire to ever ''be in style" even though by doing so they may be impoverished. But there arc good causes for the Pan- ams's popularity, the chief one being that the common or garden straw hat, with it's stiff brim, so universally worn in this country and abroad. is fragile affair, breaks easily and has little to re- commend 1t except lightness of weight.
 A good Panama may be worn a life time can be blocked to any shape and is exceedingly comfortable to the head. It Is, .n short. summer luxury and only It's costliness mas prevented 1t from being worn.
 Among the false notions regarding Pan ana hats, and there are great many is that of it's origin. The name, in the first place. would lead one to be- Iieve that the fabric is manufactured in Panama. whereas the fact Is that Ecu ador, Colombia and Guayaquil produce two-thirds of all the Panafn1s in the ma=- ket.
 The City of Panama is merely ship ping port for these hats brought from other places It is the metropolis for the northern part of South America.
 The name was originally coined by some French merchants, who bought straw hats in the village of Monte Cristo, Ecuador. and took them back to Paris. They at- tracted attention on the boulevards there, and when queried about them the French men curtly replied, "Chapeaux de Pan- anna"
 False Notion Refuted.
 Another illusion that prevails Is that the natives weave these precious hats under water. The rumor probably started from the method of soaking the raw ma erials in water prior to their being woven.
 There Is nothing extraordinary about this, the object being merely to soften the "straw" so that 1t will be pliaIble and easy to handle.
 To call the Panama a straw hat is by the way, an anomaly, for 1t is not made of straw at all; the material used in it's is either the stem of palm leaves or a rare sort of grass that grows In South America.
 The natives are very delft in curing and 1 weaving both of these products The palm they tear in shreds with their teeth | until it spreads out fan shape. After a l long soaking the palm stem is taken out |
 Good for Bad Teeth,
 Not Bad for Good Teeth.