Sham S. Misri
One day President
Theodore Roosevelt was on a hunting trip in
Mississippi. The presidential hunting party trailed and caught a lean, black
bear. They tied the bear to a tree, and informed the president about this. When
the president arrived on the scene, he refused to shoot the tied and exhausted
bear. He considered it to be unsportsmanlike.
Next day, Washington Post cartoonist drew a cartoon which
was published on the front-page of the paper. The cartoonist pictured
Roosevelt, his gun before him with the butt resting on the ground and his back
to the animal, gesturing his refusal to take the trophy shot. Written across
the lower part of the cartoon were the words "Drawing the Line in
Mississippi," which coupled the hunting incident to a political dispute.
The cartoon drew immediate attention. In Brooklyn, NY, a
shopkeeper displayed 2 toy bears in the window of his novelty store. The bears
had been made by shopkeeper's wife. She had made the bears from plush stuffed with
soft material and finished with black button eyes. The shopkeeper recognized
the immediate popularity of the new toy. He made a request to the President
that the bears be called Teddy's Bears. The shopper received permission from
Roosevelt himself to call them "Teddy's Bears."
The little stuffed bears were a success. As demand for them
increased, the shopkeeper moved his business to a loft, under the name of the
Ideal Novelty and Toy Corporation.
Just as this idea was born in The United States, the Teddy
Bear was also born in Germany. The Steiff Company of Giengen produced its first
stuffed bears during the same 1902-1903 period. The company had made toys for a
number of years and had produced small wool-felt pincushion type animals of
many varieties. The animals were the creation of Margaret Steiff. The Steiff bears were first introduced at the
1903 Leipzig Fair, where an American buyer saw them and ordered several
thousand for shipment to the US.
The
cartoon had appeared in The Washington Post in 1902.
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