Antique 1935 Mity Fine Broom Label 🧹 Art Deco Swan NROG Chicago Grocers Advertising - NOS Litho Paper Ephemera

Mity Fine Broom Label 🦢 1935, National Retailer-Owned Grocers of Chicago

Size: 6 1/4" x 3 1/2"

A white swan gliding across the top, MITY FINE in big black letters, BROOM in white on a navy band, and yellow sunburst rays, each edged in a thin red line, fanning out behind it all. At the bottom, in a little white panel: N.R.O.G. - NATIONAL RETAILER-OWNED GROCERS, INC. - DISTRIBUTORS - General Offices - CHICAGO, ILL. - and the tiny line COPYRIGHT 1935. Never used, back plain. I have a stack, so you'll get one like the one shown.

🛒 Grocers Who Owned Their Own Wholesaler

That company name tells the story. In the '20s and '30s the big chain stores were squeezing the corner grocer, and Chicago's independents fought back by banding together - cooperatives and voluntary chains they owned themselves, buying in bulk like a chain and putting their own house brands on the shelf. The best known of them all, IGA - the Independent Grocers Alliance - got its start in 1926. National Retailer-Owned Grocers was one of those outfits, owned by the very stores it supplied, and Mity Fine was one of its brands. A shopper buying a broom at the neighborhood grocery in 1935 got this swan on the handle.

They had a whole line of these broom labels - Viking is another one I carry, with the same N.R.O.G. Chicago panel and the same 1935 copyright.

🧹 Why So Fancy for a Broom?

Because a broom leaning in a barrel by the door had to sell itself. Sunburst rays, a swan, a name like Mity Fine - in the middle of the Depression, that was a lot of style for a nickel's worth of label. It looks wonderful framed in a laundry room or a kitchen.