Possible origin of the use of X's for price/quality level designation

[buler]

There has already been lengthy discussions on the use of, and meanings of, X's pertaining to hat quality and pricing. But why was the X chosen as the designator in the first place? I ran across these references in two books from the 1850/1860 timeframe both quoting a publication from the 1580's.

Here are the quotations....

Reference from the book, "History of the Hatting Trade in Danbury, Conn 1860

Reference 2 from book, "Notes on the Prior Existence of the Castor Fiber in Scotland", MDCCCLVII 1857

When I read these yesterday, it seemed that this could be an origin of the use of the X. A little more research on shilling coins turned up the following:

Unite english coin had a value of twenty shillings and was marked with an "XX" (referred to as a "value mark")
Laurel english coin had a value of twenty shillings and a value mark of "XX"
Gold Rose Ryal had a value of thirty shillings and a value mark of "XXX"

I also found mention of 10 shillings using a single "X" value mark.

So, we have the quotation from the 1583 (or 1585) book that ties beaver hats with XX,XXX, etc. and shillings and the value marking of shillings using X's. Could this have been passed along to the late 1800's and somehow ended up as a 1X, XX designation on a Stetson sweatband?

B

 

[VetPsychWars]

That is a logical progression from your analysis. Quite reasonable.

Tom

 

[fedoracentric]

It would make sense if true. And since there is no other sensible explanation yet offered, I'd say your theory has to rack as our single best explanation yet.

 

[Lotsahats]

Love it!

 

[Joshbru3]

Excellent find, Bill!! Thanks for posting this!! This would seem to be the most logical and accurate history behind "x" designations!!

 

[alanfgag]

Great find!

I wonder if the X's associated with homemade whiskey (said to denote passes through a still and the resulting increase in purity) has some connection. Seems that whiskey topped the scale at 3X. Much easier to confirm the amount of alcohol in a mash than the amount of beaver in felt.

 

[facade]

Interesting but unless the usage of x's on hats can be traced by consistent use to the 1500's, doubtful.

X is a common replacement symbol. Has been for a long time. Most likely marketing liked the idea of using an X over trying to list percentage of finer fur.

 

[fedoracentric]

It would make sense, though, that the "x" idea is carried through. As the moonshine thought above notes, one x two x and three x would be a natural idea to gravitate to since that concept is used elsewhere in other products. So, maybe the 1500s was not a point to point history, but a point in a series of X marks the spot points leading to hatters adopting the x as well?

 

[Lefty]

 

[Stanley Doble]

"Bever hattes of XX, XXX, or XL shillinges price fetched from beyonde the seas"

The source of beaver fur for making hats, was North America. The beaver played such a large part in the early exploration and development of North America, that Canada has a beaver on its coat of arms. No other material can compare to beaver fur for making felt hats.

Roman numerals X = 10, XX = 20, XXX = 30, XL = 40, L = 50. So the beaver felt hats ranged in price from twenty shillings to forty shillings.

Forty shillings or two pounds sterling was a lot of money in the 16th or 17th century, but the rich took pride in wearing hundreds of pounds' worth of fine silks, brocades, furs, silver buckles precious stones and gold jewellry.

It is possible that at some time the hatters' guild took steps to standardize the price and quality of hats, or maybe it was just customary to refer to x, xx, xxx as grades of hats.

 

[TheDane]

But why was the X chosen as the designator in the first place?

So, we have the quotation from the 1583 (or 1585) book that ties beaver hats with XX,XXX, etc. and shillings and the value marking of shillings using X's. Could this have been passed along to the late 1800's and somehow ended up as a 1X, XX designation on a Stetson sweatband?

I guess, the explanation is "Roman Numerals":

"I" = 1
"V" = 5
"X" = 10
"L" = 50
"C" = 100
"D" = 500
"M" = 1000

When two letters are combined, there are two rules:
1) The two "numbers" are equal - or the second is lower than the first. Then the two "numbers" are added.

2) The first "number" is lower than the second. Then the first "number" is subtracted from the second.

2 is written like "II", 6 like "VI", 20 like "XX", 30 like "XXX" (rule #1).

4 is written like "IV", 40 like "XL" (rule #2)

- but you could also write 4 like "IIII" and 40 like "XXXX". The latter is rarely seen (outside hatting), but "IIII" is often used on watches, due to better visual ballance.

It may originally have been tied to the price, but if so I think that "knot" was untied pretty early(?)

 

[barrowjh]

I like it Buler, because it (potentially) fits in so many ways. 10, 20, 30 & 40 shillings - 4 grades of beaver. Stetson had 3X, Sovereign, 7XCB, and the 100. Stetson had several other designations over the years, but were there ever more than 4 grades of beaver felt in production at the same time? Today there are only two - 50% & 100% (Winchester), and a third grade if some more exotic fur is thrown in. So, I can imagine as many as 3 grades of beaver content plus one grade of beaver and exotic, but there really is no reason to have a lot of different mixes. We have seen how it is actually done, and it just isn't practical to parse it into multiple grades.

 

[diabolicaldog]

XXXX... not beaver but beer.

 

[Denton]

Very interesting! The next time I think I need a new hat, I'll have to remember that I am "pleasing the fancy of my inconstant mind."

I have a few thoughts and questions. If the Xs that distinguish grades of felt are originally Roman numerals, at what time do they become merely Xs?

One possibility is that Stubbes was mistaken. Maybe the Elizabethan hatters were just using Xs. Stubbes, who received a classical education, may have been more literate than the hatters, but he might not have understood their jargon; he may have incorrectly viewed their marks as Roman numerals, and tied them to a price system. His description suggests that he personally never paid money for a beaver hat. In general, because his descriptions are so ungenerous, he is not the most reliable historical source.

I'm surprised that grades of felt would have been linked to a price system in 16th-century London, which, to the best of my knowledge, was not a cash economy. Surely the hat industry was not standardized -- there would not have been a price system shared by different makers? I don't think that 16th-century bakers and drapers had such standards. But Stubbes would know better than I.

My other question has to do with the Englishness of the Xs. If the Xs originally designated shilling values, does this mean that American hatters are part of an English tradition? How English was the hat industry in the U.S.? Is it possible, for example, to connect the Stetson firm to the colonial past of Philadelphia?

 

[TheDane]

One possibility is that Stubbes was mistaken. Maybe the Elizabethan hatters were just using Xs. Stubbes, who received a classical education, may have been more literate than the hatters, but he might not have understood their jargon; he may have incorrectly viewed their marks as Roman numerals, and tied them to a price system.

It's probably more likely, that we forget, that Stubbe was raised using Roman Numers as number-system. To him, "XX, XXX or XL Shillings" would be the way to write "20, 30 or 40 Shillings". The numbers in the book were written in 1583/85 ... Roman Numbers were used for everything.

To me it seems, that Stubbe somehow knew the prices were 20, 30 and 40 Shillings - but we don't know from where he knew it. The only thing we know is, he must have been told, they were worth "XX, XXX and XL" Shillings - because those were the numbers in use at the time.

I like Buler's theory, but I don't find it particularly plausible. To me X's may still mean anything - and their origin is still blurred.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Very interesting! The next time I think I need a new hat, I'll have to remember that I am "pleasing the fancy of my inconstant mind."

I have a few thoughts and questions. If the Xs that distinguish grades of felt are originally Roman numerals, at what time do they become merely Xs?

One possibility is that Stubbes was mistaken. Maybe the Elizabethan hatters were just using Xs. Stubbes, who received a classical education, may have been more literate than the hatters, but he might not have understood their jargon; he may have incorrectly viewed their marks as Roman numerals, and tied them to a price system. His description suggests that he personally never paid money for a beaver hat. In general, because his descriptions are so ungenerous, he is not the most reliable historical source.

I'm surprised that grades of felt would have been linked to a price system in 16th-century London, which, to the best of my knowledge, was not a cash economy. Surely the hat industry was not standardized -- there would not have been a price system shared by different makers? I don't think that 16th-century bakers and drapers had such standards. But Stubbes would know better than I.

My other question has to do with the Englishness of the Xs. If the Xs originally designated shilling values, does this mean that American hatters are part of an English tradition? How English was the hat industry in the U.S.? Is it possible, for example, to connect the Stetson firm to the colonial past of Philadelphia?

I suppose at some time between 1585 and 1900, hatters or hat manufacturers forgot the origin of the X system but still used it to grade hats. Possibly as prices slowly changed.

You did not need a classical education to know Roman numerals. They appeared all over the place, on tombstones, buildings, in the copyright dates on the frontispiece of a book, all over the place.

16th century London certainly was a cash economy. You could buy goods from all over the world and goods were generally paid for in gold and silver. There were Letters of Credit and other paper financial instruments but the average person never saw anything but copper, silver and, if they were lucky, gold.

In a cash economy based on metal coins, people had a much more fixed idea of the value of things. For example a loaf of bread cost a penny, and a penny loaf weighed a pound. This is how it was, and how it had always been. An Englishman would expect to go anywhere in the country and be able to buy a familiar penny loaf of bread.

In the case of hats, if the customer knew what was what, he would have a very good idea of what a hat cost, and if the hatter wanted a high price he had better be able to justify it in some way, either extra high quality, or an especially fashionable style, or something.

Read a book like London Labor And The London Poor and find out just how shrewd illiterate working men and women could be.

No doubt American hatters were derived from an English tradition. After the Revolution they would deviate more and more from their origins, yet they looked to England, France and Italy for new fashions in hats like everything else. I suppose if you knew the name and history of everyone connected to Stetson hats you could trace from apprentice to master, generation after generation, back to colonial Philadelphia and thence to England.

 

[Denton]

Just to be clear, I did not mean to suggest that 16th-century hatters could not have used Roman numerals. My suggestion is that when Stubbes saw the Xs, he might have jumped to the conclusion that they were Roman numerals, and therefore shilling values. But they might not have been Roman numerals; they might have been symbols specific to the hat trade, as they were later in the hat industry in the U.S.

In other words, I'm suggesting that the hatters might have known something that Stubbes did not know. (On the subject of the literacy of hatters, any hatter who attended grammar school in 16th-century England would have received a classical education. Izaak Walton, one of the great writers of the period, was a draper, and he never even went to grammar school.)

I'm not so sure about this:

16th century London certainly was a cash economy. You could buy goods from all over the world and goods were generally paid for in gold and silver. There were Letters of Credit and other paper financial instruments but the average person never saw anything but copper, silver and, if they were lucky, gold.

In a cash economy based on metal coins, people had a much more fixed idea of the value of things. For example a loaf of bread cost a penny, and a penny loaf weighed a pound. This is how it was, and how it had always been. An Englishman would expect to go anywhere in the country and be able to buy a familiar penny loaf of bread.

In the case of hats, if the customer knew what was what, he would have a very good idea of what a hat cost, and if the hatter wanted a high price he had better be able to justify it in some way, either extra high quality, or an especially fashionable style, or something.

My understanding is that the economy of 16th-century London included metal coins, but was not exactly based on them. There was a lot of bartering and haggling, and one could expect to pay different prices at different shops. Even weight could be geographically relative; a pound might not mean the same weight in every region, or in every shop in the same region. The failed attempt to standardize the weight of loaves of bread was a major issue during the revolutionary period in France. A difficult problem -- no matter how carefully you weigh the flour beforehand, the weight of the finished loaf is going to be something else.

Or think of the scene in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography when he arrives in Philadelphia for the first time, enters a baker's shop, and tries to buy a threepenny loaf, imagining something like the loaves of bread that he used to eat in Boston. Only, in Philadelphia, they don't even make a threepenny loaf. Instead, they give him "three puffy rolls." That's what the world was like before standardization.

So I'm surprised to learn that there was a price system for beaver hats in England as early as the 16th century. But that seems to be what Stubbes is saying.

 

[Stanley Doble]

He makes it perfectly clear that the price of the hats was XX, XXX, or XL shillings. As for how he knew that, my guess is he went into a few hat shops and asked. He seems to be well informed on the fashions in hats, whether of silk, bever, velvet or taffetie. As if he did some research before he took pen in hand.

In a free market competition will keep prices in line. And of course, he was talking about the market he knew, prices and styles of hats might have been different in other parts of the country.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I know the story of Ben Franklin walking into Philadelphia for the first time. Notice that he was surprised when the baker didn't have a threepenny loaf - I don't suppose he had ever seen a baker's shop that didn't. By the way I think it was a penny loaf he was after.

It doesn't make sense that the baker would not make a standard loaf of bread, more likely it was late in the day and he was sold out of the most popular bread products and only had a few Kaiser rolls left.

 

[mayserwegener]

Read a book like London Labor And The London Poor and find out just how shrewd illiterate working men and women could be.

No doubt American hatters were derived from an English tradition. After the Revolution they would deviate more and more from their origins, yet they looked to England, France and Italy for new fashions in hats like everything else. I suppose if you knew the name and history of everyone connected to Stetson hats you could trace from apprentice to master, generation after generation, back to colonial Philadelphia and thence to England.

I don't agree regarding Stetson. Mechanized hat making is mid 1800s (started by the English) and later. German immigrants and first generation workers were most likely the higher percentage (given the large number of German Americans living in Philadelphia at that time and seeing the surnames in the Stetson newspapers posted here).

The American makers did follow English makers. The English makers were very conservative. All you have to do is look at their trade journals from the late 1800s and early 1900s to see they were slow to accept Continental soft felt trends. You start to see Continential Euro imports gain ground in America (the English makers less) in the very end of the 1800s (also parallels the large influx of Euro immigrants mid 1800s into the early 1900s). You also have to include Austria and to a less degree Germany. By the way I am talking mechanized hat making.