My City August 2021

MYHISTORY

Author’s Note

What can you say? On the very next day, Stone took his new pants to the store. In no time at all, came an end to his fall as his orders started to soar. “Come one! Come all!” came Oren’s call. “These pants resist the essence of wet!” “After spilling your beer, all over your rear, You’ll still be the driest one yet!” As part of a trick, he was able to pick a damsel to put on a pair. He splashed in her face a bucket well-placed of a tea that tasted quite fair. With a choke and a sputter, she called him a nutter, dripping all over the ground. But as soon as she checked to see what was wrecked, she found the pants perfectly sound. “You see what I’ve got, you silly old sots? My Neptunian Pantaloons! With these four-dollar pants, you won’t miss your rents, or rainy-day afternoons.” With fistfuls of dollars and loud, greedy hollers, the crowd wanted all they could take. They bought every last one, and then just for fun, Put them on and jumped in the lake! Sales were on fire and in the world of attire every leg and waist was soon festooned with Oren Stone’s instant, damp resistant, rain flocking, waterfall mocking, Spill neglecting, deluge deflecting, storm living, non-aqua forgiving, Neptunian Pantaloons.

Okay, I took liberties ... a few. (We’ll get to that.) When researching Oren Stone and the Flint Woolen Mills for this month’s story, I coined the term “Oren Stone and the Neptunian Pantaloons” to which our editor replied, “that sounds very Harry Potter.” I agreed, and then realized that it also sounded very “Lewis Carroll.”After that realization, I simply couldn’t resist having a little fun with it. Oren Stone opened Flint Woolen Mills in 1867 to provide relief to local farmers who were finding it too expensive to ship out of-town for processing. Initially, the mill was extremely successful and Stone opened a second in 1879 and soon a third. In 1886, he leased one of his buildings to Durant &Dort for their road cart business (Factory 1).The Flint Woolen Mills produced blankets, flannel,mittens and hosiery in cashmere and other threads. In 1896, Congress passed theWilson-GormanTariff Act which damaged the success of many woolen mills throughout the country; nearly 40 percent closed. Stone’s business also suffered.Around that time, he opened the Flint Pantaloon Company with his friend,DavidTraxler. (Stone also partnered withWilliam Atwood on multiple ventures.) In 1897, Stone died and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery. In 1898,Traxler and associates introduced the Neptunus Cloth by making the claim that it was impervious to water. (It’s here that I took the liberty. In actuality, Oren Stone was gone when Neptunus was introduced, but “David Traxler and the Neptunian Pantaloons” just didn’t work, man.)The fabric was a hit and the company was selling a half million yards of Neptunus annually. As the automobile business caught on, the owners of Flint Woolen Mills refused to make fabric for automobiles and ended sales to jobbers (wholesalers), preferring to sell directly to retailers and consumers. Both decisions were ultimately bad and the company went out of business in 1913. Oren Stone played a large role in the establishment of Flint.Besides operating FlintWoolenMills,he owned Stone’s OperaHouse (dubbed “the safest place in town”) and was mayor of the city in 1888. x

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Photos from Detroit Public Library