Omaha daily bee., 1909-11-08

The National Millinery Jobbers' associs-
ton now holding its annual convention in
New York, is al organization concerned
more with the financial side Of the milHn-
cry usine than with the artistic. The
millinery business in the United states is
a arometer which registers the slightest
variation in the prosperity Of the country.
Americans are at once the most prosperous
and the most extrevagant people in the
world, and both qualities are shown in the
that the American millinery bill is
larger than that OF all the rest OF the
world combined. Paris makes the styles,
makes the prices. and Paris makes
the hats, but It is not alone for the Paris
ienne. OF course, there are many smartly
dressed women in Paris, probably more
than In any other city, but even In that
vortex OF the whirlpool Of fashion II Is
only the few who have either the desire
or the money to follow the vagaries OF the
mllliners.
In the United States, on the other hand,
there is not a village, however remote, to
which the fashion journals do not penetrate
and in which the feminine heart is not
enslaved to its own conception OF what Is
the smartest and the latest thinE in hats,
In fact. II Paris is the alpha OF millinery
then in Podunk the omega, for verify Il Is
In the backwoods villages that styles In
hats reach the extreme OF faddishness.
The village belle and the farmers daugh-
ter Of La Belle. France, 20 through their
thrifty youth with never a thought OF ape
ing the hats OF the grand ladies OF Paris,
The American village belle and farmers
daughter are subscribers to the smartest
fashion magazines and their hats must be
built in exact imitation OF the newest piet-
ures in the gayest OF fashion plates. And
all of this means more money for the mill
liners. Prices OF women's hats run a long
scale upward from the country store where
q s. hat Is considered a creation up to
the smart city shop where It Is absolutely
impossible to find anything that looks like
a hat for less than SOS, and where even the
s6 customer must quail before the lifted
eyebrows and upturned nose of the sales
lady.
Every spring n fall the women OF the
United States who buy cheap hats exhibit
more courage than ever has been eX-
hibited by any army on any battlefield In
the history of warfare. II II Ii humlliating
not to buy the highest priced hat in the
shop, 1t is disgraceful to buy the cheapest
one. 1t is not to be supposed for an in
slant that milliners are ava OF this
condition of affairs. They know that many
women are brave enoug to haggle over the
price and to actually buy q cheap hat, but
they also know tina there are thousands
who are frightened into paying the greater
price. They also know, learned as they
are in the ways Of woman-nature, that
there are thousands and thousands of
women Who are perfectly willing to buy
a SO hat II only 1t so be that they are re-
quirsd to pay $50 for that same hat. Mil
liners, in their confidential moments, win
confess that they are able to recognize
such women at sight and that when one
comes into the shop all prices are doubled
automatically.
Large shops and department stores put
the prices on the hats in plain figures,
thereby preventing a sliding scale from
operating. However, there is many a
woman who goes into the large shop and
buys a hat on the virtue of the plainly
marked price tag, who Is very much de-
lighted il none Of her friends discover
.Nftere she got that hat.
One OF tie ~strangest features OF this
lpechhari business Is that, while no mere
man may hope to understand the vagaries
of the fashions, or hazard a guess as to
Ethe possible cost OF a hat, yet 1t is the
man millinor who is at the bottom Of the
whole thing. The vast majority of the
working milliners, those who make and
trim the hats, are women. But the de-
signers, the merchants and the jobbers are
men, and It is they who direct the semi
annual assault OF the mllliners upon the
bank balances of the nation.
In no other branch of ordinary mercan-
tile business are profits so great as in
women's hats, However, the mllliner is
able TO set up a very foreeful argument in
defense Of his 500 per cent profit. In the
first place, the hats Of one season are as
useless six months later as the birds nests
Of yesteryear, In theory they are abso-
lutely dead stock. As a matter of fact,
however, very few trimmed hats are car
ried forward from one season to another
the manufacturing end OF the business
being in such close relation with the selling
agencies, and shrewd observers have dis
covered that radical changes in the styles
Of hat shapes never take place when the
wholesale houses are carrying a surplus
stock Of last seasons shapes, After all, II