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GuideToAntiqueAndVintageFasteners

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From the sources available, it was easy to establish the kind of man Charles Rosenfeld was,<br />

He was friendly and easy to approach. His salesmanship skills came naturally and earned<br />

him great respect in the industry. He did retire in 1960 and enjoyed 23 years of retirement<br />

before passing away in 1983.<br />

Seth Seiders, Born in 1883 in Paulding Ohio, Seth Seiders seems to have entered this life driven<br />

by an intense desire to make money. It was said that he worked as a child selling magazines,<br />

trapping animals for the pelts and he sold blackberries. Even in his youth, his goal was to make<br />

a million dollars.<br />

Before long, he had grown into “a big, well-dressed, blonde-headed man with an arresting gray<br />

eye,” as he was described in 1926. Seiders started a short-lived business, sold advertising for a<br />

newspaper, traveled the country selling door to door, married a businesswoman, and ultimately<br />

did make a million dollars<br />

How he made that money, though, is a matter of some debate. After moving to Chicago, he<br />

founded and presided over Seth Seiders Incorporated, and built a tiny empire selling printed<br />

pep talks and motivational sales booklets.<br />

During the same years of the first half of the 1920s that Seiders was building his business in<br />

Chicago, Al Capone was taking over the Chicago underworld—making millions every year off<br />

liquor and gambling and prostitution—bribing and threatening and striking deals with countless<br />

lawmen and politicians and businessmen. The rumors were that Seth Seiders and Al Capone<br />

had mutual business interest.<br />

In 1924, Seiders left Chicago for New Mexico, for the Jemez Mountains, but continued to spend<br />

at least half of every year in Illinois. He bought a large piece of property in the Jemez<br />

Mountains’ Cebolla Valley, built a house, a dancehall, an exclusive and technically illegal bar, a<br />

little store, and numerous outbuildings. Stables held horses for his guests to ride, hop plants<br />

grew around a mysteriously locked building, and there was more than enough room for friendly<br />

local girls, banquets, and slot machines. The property became known as the Rancho Rea, after<br />

Seiders’ wife, Rhea, and Seiders’ friends and associates would come west from Chicago and the<br />

East Coast just to see it. One of those people that spent time at the ranch was Al Capone.<br />

Wirt W. Hurd, Mr. Hurd was the Treasurer for the Seiders – Mather Company. Unfortunately<br />

nothing has been found on this individual.<br />

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