Of Note: How a Kitten in a Boot Explains Urban Culture in the Industrial Revolution

It may not look like it, but the kitten in this boot hints at some dramatic shifts in America’s urban culture.

First, the letterhead. This is the corporate stationery of a Boston-based shoe manufacturer called Graham & Company, founded by an ambitious Irish immigrant named John R. Graham. If you can read his messy handwriting, you’ll see his signature at the bottom of the letter. Graham was 44 years old in 1891 and a Civil War veteran who ran a factory with his brother in Quincy, Massachusetts. The boots and shoes manufactured there were sold at the Graham & Company shop in downtown Boston. It must have attracted a well-heeled clientele. The customer being addressed here was U.S. Navy Secretary Benjamin F. Tracy.

This was an era of boom and bust for American businesses. Economic crises were called “panics,” and a serious panic (like the one in 1893) could cause everything from stock market crashes and bank runs to the mass bankruptcy of major railroads. But in a time of unprecedented consumer choice and economic uncertainty, Graham & Company thrived. A decade after the Panic of 1893, the business had actually expanded. Ads in elite northeastern prep school newspapers trumpeted the “Graham Shoe” as “the LEADING COLLEGE SHOE,” and company boosters claimed Graham Shoes were known across the Atlantic Seaboard. In fact, the company thrived so much that Graham left Boston altogether, transforming himself into a railroad and real estate magnate and relocating to Bangor, Maine.

Maybe the kitten helped. Describing similar commercial ephemera in Australia, Andrew J. May, Stephen Banham, and Christine Eid have called decorative letterheads like this one “paper ambassadors.” Carefully placed engravings of kittens in boots, bustling modern factories, or glistening new automobiles, they write, served as “instrument[s] of public relations,” presenting idealized depictions of reality or showcasing the identities and ideologies of their creators. As consumer culture grew more complex, more sophisticated corporate identities began appearing in commercial ephemera. In this case the symbolism is straightforward: a shoemaker showing us a shoe, not far off from a fake boot hanging in front of a traditional cobbler’s shop. But the inclusion of a kitten pleading directly with the consumer does hint at some cleverness to come, as corporate branding grew into the multibillion-dollar industry we know today.

The kitten tells us one other thing, about the changing relationships between humans and animals in an urbanizing country. As Katherine C. Grier writes, cats were ubiquitous in Victorian-era American cities, though they often served as free-ranging mousers rather than pampered household pets. Even so, the era saw the emergence of a new cat fancy culture. Cultural elites like Mark Twain and Ralph Waldo Emerson were bringing cats into their homes, and Boston was playing host to the nation’s very first cat show, in 1878. Meanwhile, as reform-minded public health officials began clearing city streets of their hordes of “half-starved feral cats,” a new class of animal welfare activist countered, demanding humane treatment and a painless death for any animals that needed to be euthanized. In a sense, Grier writes, “restoring the status of pet to as many animals as possible.”

Unbeknownst to John R. Graham, the kitten in this boot was an innovator.  It charted the progress of the Industrial Revolution and pointed the way toward an era when corporate brands became unavoidable while offering us the comfort of our household cats. Plus, it’s cute.

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“Graham & Company…” Edward M. Graham, John R. Graham (1847-1915) and the Bangor Railway & Electric Co. (New York: The Newcomen Society, 1950), 7-8.

“panics…” Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: Norton, 2011), 393.

“company boosters…” Graham Shoe Co. advertisement, The Phillipian, Andover, Massachusetts, October 17, 1900, page 4.

“…commercial ephemera” Andrew J. May, Stephen Banham, and Christine Eid, “Paper Ambassadors: Letterheads and the Iconography of Urban Modernity,” Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria 13 (2014), 44-46.

“Grier writes…” Katherine C. Grier, Pets in America: A History (New York: Harcourt, 2006), 45, 48-49, 218, 279-282.