The Roberts, Johnson & Rand Shoe Company out of St. Louis, MO certainly put on an advertising muscle flex with this beautifully designed metal shoe sign with mounting floor stand brackets attached on the backside. This sign advertises their Star brand of shoes are better. This shoe stand held many styles of their shoe offerings as shown in the photograph. I love this sign as the bright yellow paint color certainly attracts any buyers attention when they walked into the store back in the day. And of course, with the term “society”, the company implied owners of these shoes were of an elite status, an attribute so many try to get to by working hard every day. This stand put out the proverbial red carpet to help illustrate the elite feeling of the RJR shoe brand.
The Roberts Johnson and Rand Shoe manufacturing company was based in Saint Louis, Missouri, but had plants scattered across the Midwest where their shoes were being made. These plants often employed woman and small children as well as grown men. For whatever reason, plants with clothing and textiles were often large employers of women and children in the 1900 era before the child labor laws were enacted.