As Kraker Neared the End of the Line

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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Yesterday’s article (https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2018/03/unfinished-business.html) included photographs of Dixie, Monogram and Belmont branded flattop pencils, all of which were made by the Michael-George Company, and given the imprint on my Dixie, were made at least through 1929, when the company relocated to Libertyville.

A lot happened in the pen industry in 1929.  After decades of squared-off pens, Sheaffer’s new Balance line (introduced in 1928) became all the rage, leading pen manufacturers to taper the ends of their writing instruments to the greatest extent allowable by law.  Sheaffer held design patents on the new shape, which the company aggressively protected through threats and litigation, most notably the company’s lawsuit against the Worth Featherweight Pen Company - see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-one-pennant-rejected.html and Daniel Kirchheimer’s excellent article on the subject, published in The Pennant but also maintained by the author separately at https://danielkirchheimercom.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/featherweight-vs-heavyweight.pdf.

Michael-George was no exception, but with the Depression closing in and the firm’s bankruptcy looming ahead in 1932, it was a very narrow window of time within which the company produced more streamlined pens and pencils.

Note the differentiation between “made” in the first paragraph of this article and “produced” in the third.  Dennis Bowden’s series of articles on Kraker and Michael-George, which ended on a cliffhanger just as the company was relocating to Libertyville in 1929, documented how the company had significant tooling and was clearly manufacturing its own product until that time.  However, was Michael-George able – during the onset of the Depression – to retool and make more streamlined-looking pens and pencils?  And to what extent would he dare to do so, going head-to-head once more against Walter Sheaffer in a patent dispute?

I think the answer is that he dared a little bit, but he couldn’t retool.  I do not believe pencils like this Pencraft were made by Michael George:

The celluloid isn’t much help in identifying who might have made it for them, since I’ve never seen this striking blue and white plastic on anything else:

However, the imprint provides a good clue:

The large imprints on the lower barrels have been abandoned in favor of a block-print imprint on the upper barrel, opposite the clip.  Another company’s imprints were very similar: the Moore Pen Company.  In fact, compare the top ends of the Pencraft and one marked Moore:

Same trim bands, both in size and in placement.  Same location of imprint.  And notice those same white swirls in the plastic, rendered in brown rather than blue.  Since Pencraft was Kraker’s flagship brand in the post-Sheaffer litigation years, is it safe to say that the Michael-George Company’s last product lines were made by Moore?

Maybe.

A few years back, I compared a Dixie which is similar to today’s Pencraft to a Belmont and an Eagle (see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/08/quite-bit-north-of-mason-dixon-line.html).

I had concluded at the time that Eagle made my Dixie . . . perhaps placing too much emphasis on the similarity of the plastic and not noticing that the clips on the Belmont and the Dixie are identical to clips used on a Moore (I also placed great emphasis on an Eagle patent appearing on a box of Belmont leads).

The confusion is warranted, because Michael-George, Moore and Eagle keep turning up together, dancing in the same very small circles.  I’d noted in The Catalogue at page 25 that some Belmonts were clearly made by Moore, and others were clearly Eagle-made:

Maybe it isn’t so clear.  Earlier metal Pencraft pencils mimicked Eagle’s patented Simplex, and both of my Pencrafts are stamped “Patented” (see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2011/12/other-pencraft.html and https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/02/eight-days-week-eagle-simplex.html).   Moore’s pens and pencils were at one time very distinct - you’d never confuse one like the one I posted about here the other day for an Eagle -- but with later Moores such as these, you easily could.

Could it be that Moore, like Michael-George, had Eagle manufacture some of its products for a time?

Unfinished Business

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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Here’s another one that came home by way of Jerome Lobner:

In addition to being just freaking gorgeous, with those wine-colored veins, it’s got a great imprint for a brand I’ve been hunting for some time:

“Dixie / Non-Breakable / Libertyville, Ill. Pat.”  A few years ago I had a Dixie fountain pen with this enormous imprint, and I always thought it would be cool to have one of the pencils.   Note the reference to a patent on the imprint-- the pens have the same imprint, and there’s nothing really unusual about the way this pencils works, so I don’t know what that’s all about.

The Dixie was a brand produced by the Michael George Company, named (in reverse) for its namesake, George Michael Kraker - that’s the same Kraker that got himself sued by Walter Sheaffer over the patent for the lever-filler fountain pen.   Kraker’s companies had several of their own house brand names - Pencraft was his earliest, dating to 1918, followed quickly by Yankee and also Dixie.

Kraker also manufactured pens and pencils for The United Drug Company’s Rexall stores, such as Monogram and Belmont.  These house brands shared elements of the Dixie imprint, but manufacture of these would have started while Michael-George was still in Grand Haven, Michigan:

With Kraker’s involvement in the company, several of my friends have written so much about his movements that most of the research I was going to do for this article has already been done.

The best reference is a series of articles the late Dennis Bowden and Jineen Heiman wrote for The Pennant, part one of which was published in the spring 2010 issue and part two in the fall 2010 issue.  Bowden documented in great detail Kraker’s activities after Sheaffer’s legal victory over him in 1917: first in Chicago in 1918, where he organized the Pencraft Company in 1919, then in Minneapolis from 1921 to 1923, then (briefly) back to Chicago, where the Michael-George Company name is first found, then to Grand Haven, Michigan until around 1929.

But there’s one last chapter to the story, reflected in the last paragraph of Bowden’s second article: “Part III of this article will discuss George Kraker, the Michael-George Company and its pens in Libertyville, Ill. 1929-1932.”

That, unfortunately, would be Bowden’s last words on the subject: he passed away suddenly in December, 2010, leaving the Libertyville chapter of the Michael-George story undocumented.  Given Bowden’s research from the first two articles in this series, I can only assume he had a similarly detailed amount of information to share about the company’s Libertyville years.  Unfortunately, if that research was ever committed to writing, I don’t know what became of it.

So, I’ll try to pick up where Dennis left off.

Bowden’s article indicates that corporate paperwork planning Kraker’s move to Libertyville was finalized in September, 1928, but his cliffhanger suggests that he had not moved until 1929.  The earliest reference I found to the Michael-George Company being in Libertyville was a classified ad the company placed seeking a gold pen grinder, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune on April 17, 1929:

I found a post-mortem reference that the company’s factory was located on East Church Street in Libertyville.  The product lines offered were initially the same as those the company manufactured in Grand Haven, Michigan - all of the pencils I’ve pictured above match the ones Bowden shows in the second of his articles.

As for the Dixie, I know from my own experience it was offered as both a fountain pen and a pencil.  However, I found a reference from 1931 that it was also offered as a combo pen and pencil, “as modern as air travel,” which was given away as a prize according to this ad, from the November 17, 1931 edition of the Sikeston (Missouri) Standard:

Bowden suggests that Michael-George’s run ended in 1932, and that’s consistent with what I’ve been able to find.  On October 20, 1933, The Pittsburg Press included an advertisement by Gimbels offering “Bankrupt Stock Michael George Co.,” blowing out leftover Pencraft pens for 99 cents:

Three years later, a new tenant moved into the factory building formerly occupied by Michael-George:

I find no references to indicate that Michael-George survived bankruptcy in 1932, or that George Kraker continued in the pen business after its failure.  What I have found is evidence that in Michael-George’s last days, the company was no longer manufacturing its own products.

Note:  this story continues at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2018/03/as-kraker-neared-end-of-line.html

The Hallmark Mystery - Solved

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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You’re going to think I did this on purpose.

As of yesterday morning, when “The Hard Proof” ran (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-hard-proof.html), I admitted that I didn’t have anything concrete enough to say who might have made or produced the Hallmark magazine pencil:

It’s identical to the Hutcheon Magazine Pencil and, with the exception of the clip, with the more numerous Mabie Magazine Pencil:

After I posted about the article on Facebook, my friend David Nishimura commented that I should follow up in my research on the Hallmark hard rubber pens, “which are often found with the imprint altered to ALLMAR.”

David was referring to discussions in various forums starting years ago.  In 2009, “ebrian” on fountainpennetwork.com posted this picture (the thread is at http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/100404-hallmarkkraker-overlay-pens/page-1) of a pair of Hallmark pens, sporting exactly the same logo and a patent date of September 22, 1914:

The patent date refers to number 1,111,469, issued to George Kraker:

The pens were without question made by George Kraker, and in another thread over on fountainpenboard.com (the exact thread is at http://fountainpenboard.com/forum/index.php?/topic/655-kraker-pen-company-and-hallmark-pens/), Dennis Bowden and others discussed some pen barrels he had found, which had the H and the K deliberately obliterated to leave the word “ALLMAR.”  Speculation ensued, with Dennis theorizing that the Hallmark name was found to be an infringement on the name used by Hallmark Jewelers, and Daniel Kirchheimer offering a sound hyphothesis that after Sheaffer won its lawsuit against Kraker and took over all his remaining stock, the letters were obliterated to distinguish them from earlier pens made by Kraker.

While there may be a bit of truth in both of those lines of thought, I’ve got a better one, and it comes straight from a new resource you don’t have yet:

OK, this is the part where you are going to think I did this on purpose.  By sheer coincidence, my new book, American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953, was shipped from my publisher yesterday – the same day as this article ran.  Yes, when the book came out, I had planned to run a series of articles featuring things I’ve learned in the course of writing the book . . . things that I haven’t been able to find from any other source.

This wasn’t one of them.

I truly was simply remiss in failing to read my own new book before I ran yesterday’s article.  If I had, there I would have found the answer that unlocks the real story of the Hallmark pens made by Kraker and the pencils, made by Mabie Todd or Hutcheon . ..

United States Trademark 113,655 was filed on July 22, 1916 for “fountain pens and the parts thereof,” by United Jewelers, Inc.  The date of first use claimed was July 7, 1916.

United Jewelers, Inc. was an enterprise which started in Chicago to create a network of jewelers, no more than one in each city, which with their combined bargaining strength would be able to coerce suppliers to sell in bulk to them and, in theory, be able to offer higher quality merchandise at a cost savings.

Sounds exactly like the Guild Products Company scam of a few years later, in which stationers attempted to strongarm pen and pencil makers into supplying their house brands or else be excluded from their network, doesn’t it?  (I wrote an article about that a few years ago, which can be found at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/08/back-to-drawing-board.html.)

The network of jewelers was established and in place long before the trademark was used on “fountain pens and parts thereof,” as this advertisement from 1914 indicates:

With this bit of knowledge, we now know

1.  Now that we have Hallmark pens made by Kraker and pencils made by either Hutcheon or Mabie Todd, both with the same trademark and both spot on consistent with a first use of the mark in July, 1916, it is clear that both were made for United Jewelers, Inc. as part of their house-branding for their network of Hallmark stores.

2.  There was no trademark conflict with Hallmark Jewelers . . . Hallmark Jewelers were one and the same as those affiliated with United Jewelers, Inc., and these products were made for them, not in violation of their trademark.

3.  Hallmark was not a Kraker brand, it was a Kraker contract.  Whoever obliterated the first and last letters to make “ALLMAR” pens, whether it was Kraker, Sheaffer, or someone else, did so because they did not have a contract with United Jewelers, Inc. and wanted to make some use of leftover barrels,

Oh, and by the way . . . this Hallmark logo and the chain of Hallmark Jewelers had nothing to do with the greeting card company.  At the time, they were still known as Hall Brothers – and they didn’t adopt the trade name “Hallmark” until 1928.

Life Before and After Conklin

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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There was only one reason Tom Emerson was included in yesterday’s article about Conklin’s sale to the “syndicate of Chicagoans” in August, 1938: I think his move to Eversharp in late 1937 signifies what was happening with Conklin.  Emerson had been with the company since he 1919; he’d risen through the ranks and was Vice President and International Sales Manager by December, 1936; and then, just like that, he’s off to Chicago within a year.

People who work for a company that long and are that successful usually don’t leave unless there’s a reason.  Maybe Conklin collapsed after that UAW strike and Emerson had to find another job, landing by chance at Eversharp – in that case, it’s just a coincidence that Conklin wound up moving to Chicago just a few month later.

The other possibility is the move to Eversharp signified that Eversharp was part of the “syndicate of Chicagoans” acquiring Conklin, which had been overrun by union interests.  In that case, Emerson’s move to Eversharp was actually more of a lateral move from subsidiary to parent company.

I’m beating yesterday’s dead horse.  The purposes of today’s article is to tell you about a few other things I learned about Tom Emerson along the way, both before and after his days at Conklin.  The man led a fascinating life that was much bigger than just the Conklin story and merits its own telling.

After Emerson’s retirement from Eversharp, he returned to his hometown of McKinney, Texas to lead a quiet life of community service – which led to being named “citizen of the month” for Collin County, Texas in December, 1966, and to a retrospective of his life and career which was printed in the McKinney Daily Courier-Gazette on January 12, 1967:

The story indicates that prior to his service in World War I, Colonel Tom Emerson was a traveling salesman for “Scheaffer” in 17 states.  Technically, it turns out, that’s not true.  Another article in the McKinney press, from March of 1955, quotes Emerson as saying, “I started with the Kraken Pen Company, which old-timers probably can remember.”

The Kraker Pen Company, to which he was undoubtably referring, was absorbed by Sheaffer in 1916-1917, after losing Sheaffer’s infamous patent infringement case against the company. That’s probably why after the War, there was no going back to Sheaffer, and Emerson became a Conklin man, first as a salesman in 1919, then to the manager of the San Francisco office in 1928, then to the Vice Presidency in Toledo in 1936.

From the timeline established by yesterday’s article, Emerson took off his Conklin jersey and headed to Wahleyworld sometime between May, 1937 and the end of that year.  At Eversharp, the 1967 article states he was “‘at the top’ to witness and take part in the Eversharp’s growth from $2 million in sales in 1939 to over $40 million in sales in 1943.”  And then there’s an interesting detail I haven’t seen anywhere else:

“During his time at Eversharp, Col. Tom got involved in Show business and was the “brains” behind the nationwide CBS radio program “Take It Or Leave It – $64,000 Question.”  He took the show to every major city in the U.S. promoting and dramatizing Eversharp pens.”

He also found love in the Big Apple – for the second time.  Earlier, in 1936, the McKinney press reported that “the wife of this prominent Toledo, Ohio businessman is also a native of McKinney.  She is the former Miss Glady Ditto, daughter of the late W.E. Ditto, McKinney merchant for many years.”  At some point, she also became the former Mrs. Emerson.  According to a death notice published in the January 12, 1953 edition of the Courier-Gazette, “Mrs. Glady Emerson” passed away in San Francisco, survived only by a sister and a brother.   It would appear that the first Mrs. Emerson preferred to stay behind in San Francisco, where Tom was the manager of Conklin’s sales offices, rather than migrate to the sunny shores of Toledo, Ohio.  Gladys never remarried.

After Emerson made the move to Eversharp and Eversharp’s corporate offices made the move to New York, Emerson met an opera singer named Bette, some sixteen years his junior, who “gave her recital at Carnegie Hall under the name Bette Ives and appeared frequently at Manhattan Center.”  The two married and remained together for the rest of Tom’s life – Bette died at the age of 90, in 2000.

I was able to find a few details concerning Thomas Emerson’s business activities while he was in New York working for Eversharp.  The October, 1947 issue of Sponsor magazine reported his promotion from Vice President and General Sales Manager to Vice President and Assistant to the President:

Eversharp’s ballpoint fiasco must have thrust Emerson to the top of Eversharp’s corporate ladder – or removed everyone above him.  His hometown paper reported in June, 1952 that he was appointed “General Manager” of the company, “responsible for all phases of operation of operation of Eversharp Writing Instruments.”

The 1967 article indicates that by the time he retired, Emerson was Chairman of the Board, with his offices on the 19th floor of the Empire State Building.  Although the article says Emerson retired in 1954, that doesn’t explain why he’s still named as an “Eversharp Executive” the following year, when that 1955 article ran – however, he is identified in the article as a “part-time resident” of McKinney.  On June 24, 1955, the McKinney press reported that Emerson was back in Dallas to attend a conference of executives and field representatives of the company, but indicates that Emerson “still claims McKinney his home” and indicates that he had a farm near town.

Perhaps “Col. Tom’s” retirement from Eversharp was a gradual one, with occasional appearances on behalf of the company until its sale to Parker in 1957.  He died on September 19, 1977, and his funeral services, like so many of his other life events, was front page news in the Courier-Gazette.  His work at Eversharp, according to this final article, led to him being known as “‘Mr. Eversharp’ for his work in promoting the use of ballpoint pens.”

There was a last chapter of Tom Emerson’s life which might have been lost to history, were it not for this last article.  The offices of The McKinney Courier-Gazette closed on September 21, 1977, so that its employees could attend their friend’s funeral – Tom loved his hometown paper as much as his paper loved him.  After retiring from Eversharp, he spent the last twenty years of his career – apparently until his prolonged illness claimed his life – working for the paper.