The product as worn: Red Ball on feet, lumbermen's socks, and the photograph record

1898–PRESENT · THE SIGNATURE GARMENT CARRIED INTO USE

A signature product stopped at the factory gate is only half a fashion record, so the Ball Band line is carried here into use, at the strengths the record gives. Into work: the all-knit boot and its felt and rubber successors were working footwear before they were anything else — the company's own history records that it commenced making lumbermen's long socks, the boot was a lumberman's and farmer's and labourer's boot, and the advertising of 1911 counts the wearing in millions: more than eight million pairs of feet kept “dry, warm and comfortable” by Ball-Band rubber and woolen footwear, sixteen million articles in the year's trade, a continuous line of the footwear laid end to end of more than 3,300 miles, sold through 45,000 dealers — the product as worn, enumerated by its maker while it was being worn. Into the courtroom, which is also use: the 1941 trademark case turns on the red ball embedded in the heel's tread face from 1917, a mark designed to survive the life of the shoe and be read off a worn sole — the brand carried, literally, underfoot, in the street. Into sport and street in the next generation: the Red Ball Jets canvas tennis shoes, the line every Michiana childhood of a certain era wore, and the Summerettes and Thermo-Lite shoes the company's 1955 trademark paper names as the Red Ball line's then-current forms. Into the photograph: the SJCPL's Michiana Memory collection carries the plant's own photographic and house-organ record — the Red Ball magazine's pages, workers and products together — the fullest photographic clothing evidence this county's cloth trade left. For Granger itself the photograph test was run against that same collection and the banked build's photograph record: no photograph captioned to a Granger wearer, workplace or street wearing the signature product was returned, and none is invented; the farm-era and subdivision-era clothing of this ground survives in family photographs the public collections do not caption by township. The finding prints whole: the product as worn is documented at county strength — work, street, sport and photograph — and the Granger wearer, who certainly existed in the thousands across a century of commuting, is present in the record only in aggregate, in the maker's eight-million-pairs arithmetic, not in a named local frame.

Sources:

1. Mishawaka Woolen Manufacturing Co. advertising, Rural New-Yorker, November 18, 1911 (the eight-million-pairs and 3,300-miles figures, 45,000 dealers, lumbermen's socks in the company history), via the Center for Research Libraries digital collections, consulted November 2026.
2. Mishawaka Rubber & Woolen Mfg. Co. v. S. S. Kresge Co., 119 F.2d 316 (6th Cir. 1941) (the heel tread mark from 1917, designed to remain on the product during its life).
3. Ball-Band company publications via Michiana Memory, SJCPL (the 1955 Red Ball trademark change: Red Ball Thermo-Lite, Summerettes, Jets; the house organ's photographic record), consulted November 2026.