By Julie Carter
Headlining agriculture news this week is a story about the felt hats worn by the Australian cowboys (stockmen) not meeting modern industrial safety standards.
With this hitting international news, will American cowboy hat legislation be far behind?
It all began in 2001 with the death of an Australian cowboy. Daniel Croker, 23, suffered massive head injuries after being trampled by the bulls he was gathering when he fell from his horse.
The New South Wales state government brought charges against the ranch owner and last month fined him $72,000 for breaches of safety, including failure to provide the horseman with an equestrian helmet.
Since then helmets have become compulsory for Aussie ranch cowboys while ranchers are calling for industrial laws to be changed to delineate between Outback and city factory work.
It is a given that the United States is notorious for its attempts to legislate intelligence or the lack of it, in the name of protecting us from ourselves. Making rules for what kind of “lid” the cowboy should wear to work seems not far away.
We in the west will give the same arguments they are currently presenting in Australia.
A helmet in 100 plus degree temperatures is a recipe for a heat stroke. Additionally, here in the southwest we set records for skin cancer rates. Substituting helmets for broad brimmed hats would increase the hazards for that lethal disease.
Somewhere along the line the cowboy hat got passed off as something of a romantic Wild West icon with no real function except to identify a cowboy in a crowd.
While indeed an identity to the cowboy, the hat functions well as protection from the elements. The sun is shaded off the head and the face, ears and neck. The rain runs off the brim and down the back of your slicker instead of down your neck into the inside of your clothes.
Tipped against the wind it can protect your face from the blowing dust and wind in general. Head ducked to your chest, traveling into a snowstorm, the brim will protect against a slush plastered face.
Other uses include watering your horse, fanning a fire, signaling for help and sometimes most important, providing shade over the face at siesta time.
The son of a Philadelphia hat maker created the first cowboy hat in 1865. His name was John B. Stetson, now known as the inventor of the cowboy hat.
As the story goes, John B. Stetson and some buddies went west to seek the benefits of a drier climate. During a hunting trip, Stetson amused his friends by showing them how he could make cloth out of fur without weaving. Stetson used the fur from hides collected on the hunting trip.
Stetson made an unusually large hat out of this fur-felt. He then wore the hat for the remainder of his hunting trip, at first as a joke, but then grew fond of the hat for its protection from the weather. He and other cowboys of the west ended up liking the idea so well that Stetson soon manufactured and sold a hat true to his original idea.
Perhaps we need to get the cowboy hat designated with some sort of national historical significance like a landmark so legislatures have to leave it alone.
As a cowboy hat advocate in Australia is saying, “The stockman’s hat is an icon. You can’t replace it with an ice-cream container on the head.”
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