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Five Cent DixiesThis exhibition was created for the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding  in 1908 of the company that became the Dixie Cup Company, at one time one of the city of Easton’s largest industries.  In particular, the exhibit celebrates the storied marketing history of this iconic American product, beginning with the young company’s shrewd strategy to ally itself with the movement to abolish to common drinking cup in the 1910s.  The exhibit also examines the spectacular success of the Ice Cream Dixie franchise programs of the 1920s, the pioneering use of the Dixie Circus radio show and premium give-aways of the 1930s, the coup of convincing the U.S. government to use paper cups in all its wartime operations in the 1940s, and the appeal to the new values of leisure and convenience in the American home market of the 1950s and 1960s.

The exhibition is drawn from the extraordinary collection of records preserved by company founder and president, Hugh Moore, and donated by his widow Louise Moore Pine to Skillman Library in 1993.  Since that time, the Hugh Moore Dixie Cup Company Collection has been augmented by additional gifts of materials from former Dixie employees, including Donald Greek, John Rush, William Moore, Mary McGee, Rosemary Lockard, Betty Reinhard, and others.