Mike in Woodland wrote "Ah.  So it appears to have been cut from the pasteboard
box.  With a
little effort it probably could have been steamed off since mucilage was
almost certainly the glue used."

Or soaked off; back when only natural adhesives were used, I think it was common
knowledge that you could dump a pasted-on item in hot water for a while, and
have it float free. Not that I would do that with a Stanley label, since some
colored inks are water-fugitive, and their sensitivity can change over time.
Steam would be less dangerous to the ink.

I'd guess the original adhesive was wheat flour paste or hot glue (hide glue),
both of which have production advantages over the ghastly brown mucilage I
remember from my youth, sold in little glass bottles with rubber applicators
that always clogged up and turned brittle, leading you to throw away the bottle
when it was half-full. Mucilage (at least the five-and-dime kind) tends to leave
dark brown stains that are almost impossible to remove. Also, with a
professional production-scale boxmaking set-up you can glue or paste up a number
of labels at once, then put them on before the glue dries; I don't think this
would work with mucilage. By the early 20th century they had gluing machines,
and some of these were made in a one-label size; cute little things that were
probably less than a foot on each side (writing from memory). Or after a certain
point you would have had pre-gummed labels,which I think would have used a
modified hide glue or a dextrin adhesive (dextrin is of plant origin, but highly
modified, unlike mucilage properly so called, which is apparently right out of
the plant).

Back in the day Stanley probably had a pretty big full-time cardboard boxmaking
operation, and my bet would be that they used hot glue, which is cheap, has a
lot of tack and a good open time. Maybe I'd hedge for the later period on boxes
bought in bulk from a specialist firm, with pre-gummed labels.

I once had a book in to restore, where it had been repaired once before, and the
previous restorer had adhered the half-title (the first printed page, before the
title page) to the inside of the front board, a fast, cheap, and fragile way of
doing things. I quoted on the assumption that undoing this and revealinng the
printed page would take about an hour, which it would have done if the previous
guy had used paste or glue. But the guy didn't know his business and used PVA,
so it took me two full days of skill and care to get the half-title up without
skinning away every trace of the printing. I was stuck with my quote, since I
didn't give estimates. I was proud of that one when it was done; but is it any
wonder I hate PVA?
Tom Conroyrambling on