New item for my collection.. not exactly political, but as part of an organization that operated in that sphere.

@SoDakCampaigns

Picked up a new item for my political button collection this week. Well, not exactly..

Advertised for sale as a Mitchell for Capital button, it wasn’t terribly expensive, and the vintage was of that era, so I took a chance on it. But, as I did a deep dive into it’s history, I found out that it has nothing to do with the SD State capital fights. But, it relates to an organization that operated in the political sphere.

So what is “SDTMA?” Turns out that it represented traveling salesmen. The South Dakota Traveling Men’s Association held a convention on June 21-22 of 1907, where they had US Senator Robert La Follette from Wisconsin as their keynote speaker. The South Dakota Traveling Men’s Association was organized in 1904 to represent South Dakota traveling salesmen, as an offshoot of formerly being under the same group in Minnesota.  At the convention, the group had Governor Coe Crawford in attendance providing introductory comments for Senator LaFollette, as well as “paying tribute to the individuality of the traveling man.”

Kind of a neat button, which actually fits well into my frame of “Mitchell memorabilia” from the earlier part of the 1900’s.

2 thoughts on “New item for my collection.. not exactly political, but as part of an organization that operated in that sphere.”

  1. Actually, a great button to have, Pat. Traveling Salesmen were a little late to the Mitchell-Pierre Capitol fight but as you point out, a meeting that features Governor Coe Crawford and Senator “Fighting Bob” La Follette as keynoters is of definite historic interest. Salesmen traveling the cities, towns and villages of rural, pre-automobile, pre-radio South Dakota were definite opinion molders, pre-media, a great way to spread the message. The button is a very interesting artifact from that era.

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