"Snappy Service When You Want It"

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Joe and I like to joke that there are some times we buy things on eBay just because we are tired of looking at them.   I’ll admit that’s why I finally bought this one:

The pencil is unmarked as to manufacturer, but I knew it was a Swanberg, and a somewhat tired looking example at that.  Nevertheless, every time this listing made another trip around the horn, I ended up clicking on it and seeing that yes, in fact, it was the same thing I’d seen a dozen times.  This last time, whether the price had been reduced to the point of irresistible or whether I had been reduced to the point of “preview no more,” I finally pulled the trigger.

Here’s the new addition between an earlier (I believe) aluminum model and a later (I believe) hard rubber edition:

Note that the new one shares design elements from both.  The lower one is marked “Swanberg” on the clip:

That’s what makes me think the marked version is later.  That clip is actually a generic Van Valkenberg accommodation clip, marketed as the “Holyoke B.”  A copy of the 1931 VV catalog is in the PCA’s online library, and it shows these clips, named for the company’s location in Holyoke, Massachusetts:

Since the first pencils Swanberg turned out were the thin aluminum pencils with crown tops, I theorize that a hard rubber pencil with a generic, unmarked accommodation clip and crown top preceded the one with a straight top and a clip that was custom-imprinted.  If documentation ever surfaces, I may be proven wrong (this is the part where you, dear reader, are supposed to say “challenge accepted”).

I’ve got other examples of this, but there was a reason I thought it interesting enough to buy, outside of the fact that I was tired of looking at it on eBay.  Note the advertising imprint:

“Washington Tire & Vulc. Co. / Snappy Service When You Want It.”  I really like that last line – like there would be times when you don’t want snappy service.  But what about that Washington Tire and Vulcanization Company?  Was that just a customer Swanberg made some hard rubber pencils to promote, or was it also a supplier of hard rubber parts as well?

That piqued my curiosity, since our collectors’ lore tells us the Wahl Company purchased a “Washington Rubber Company” to secure supplies of hard rubber tubing for pen and pencil barrels, which it later divested in 1926 (I covered that in A Century of Autopoint, on page 80).  Worth digging a little bit more, I thought.

Washington Rubber came up in A Century of Autopoint in connection with a trademark filing for the company, which I had run across in the course of writing American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953: “Olympian,” a name hitherto considered a “Wahl Subbrand,” which appears on pens identical to the Keeran Indestructo. 

The trademark registration, however, doesn’t support the subbrand moniker.  The Olympian name and logo wasn’t registered by Wahl – it was issued to the Washington Rubber Company.  The Olympian is more accurately described as a brand produced by Washington Rubber, but manufactured by Wahl:

The Washington Rubber Company was, at the time this was signed on April 2, 1926, located at 1800 Roscoe Street, Chicago (that was Wahl’s address as well), by its vice president Michael J. Moriarty.   Moriarty claimed the use of the logo since January 26, 1926.

Was Washington Rubber Company the same as the Washington Tire and Vulcanization Company advertised on my hard rubber Swanberg?  No – but in the course of trying to find out if there was a connection, I found a few things that don’t make sense with our collector’s lore.

The incorporation of Washington Tire and Vulcanization of Chicago was reported in The Accessory and Garage Journal in February, 1918: the incorporators were Abraham Seelig, I. Morris Amter and Leo Seelig:

In 1923, the Illinois Secretary of State’s report showed both Washington Rubber Company and Washington Tire and Vulcanization of Chicago.  Washington Rubber is shown at 1401 S. 55th Court, Cicero, with Wahl President C.S. Roberts also serving as president of Washington Rubber and C.J. Frechette as its Secretary.  Washington Tire and Vulcanization is shown as a different company, located at 640 West Washington Blvd, Chicago.  Jacob Seelig was reported as the company’s president, and Leo Seelig was the secretary.

So these were two different companies and the Swanberg advertiser is just a coincidence, right?  That would be simple. . . but a few things don’t add up.

Moody’s Manual of Railroads and Corporate Securities, published annually, reports detailed information concerning company financials.  Wahl’s acquisition of Washington Rubber was picked up by Moody’s in the 1924 edition:

“In July, 1922 acquired the Washington Rubber Co. of Chicago, an Illinois Corporation, manufacturing hard and soft rubber products,” the report states.  But there’s inconsistencies in this version, starting with the fact that prior editions of Moody’s, including the 1921 edition just before the sale, make no mention of any Washington Rubber Company manufacturing any rubber products.

A search of newspapers reveals that The Washington Rubber Company and The Washington Tire and Vulcanizing Company were both located on Washington Avenue in Chicago, and there’s no evidence that either was making rubber products – both were distributors of all sorts of automotive products, as advertisements such as this one show, from the Chicago Tribune on July 10, 1921:

Van Kerr Transformers were sold by numerous “west side” dealers, including both these Washington companies:

Here’s another detail that doesn’t make sense: Washington Rubber Company is shown in advertisements as distributors of all sorts of car parts, at that same Washington Street address, throughout the time Wahl owned the Washington Rubber Company.  I can’t find anything to suggest the company made rubber or ever moved to the address reported by the Secretary of State in Cicero: in fact, 1401 S. 55th Court, according to Google maps, is a railroad shipping yard, not a manufacturing facility.

I don’t think Wahl bought Washington Rubber as a manufacturing concern.  I think Washington Rubber was a local Chicago car parts dealer which had distribution contracts with manufacturers entitling the little shop to acquire product at cost.  Wahl wasn’t moving towards vertical integration – it was only securing contract rights to acquire product made by others, using Washington Rubber as the conduit.

That might explain a few otherwise weird things about Eversharp.  First, there was the company’s weird little diversions into automotive parts, such as the Wahl Universal Heater, the Wahl Spring Brake and the Wahl Two-Way Shock Absorber  (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/10/wahls-extracurricular-activities.html and http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/12/wahls-car-parts-business.html).  All these products were introduced shortly after Wahl sold off Washington Rubber in 1926.

It also likely explains the odd number of “tire pencils” out there – Eversharp-made (but not marked) pencils advertising various brands of tires.  Wahl would have made a lot of contacts through all the tires Washington Rubber was acquiring and distributing.

All I wanted to know when I started this story was whether Washington Tire and Vulcanizing and Washington Rubber were the same.  Now I think Washington Rubber wasn’t the same as what I thought it was.  Call it a bad bounce!