What Tips Kept

When Ball Brothers took the plant in November 1936, Charles R. Tips did not leave the glass business. He had already moved what he could carry — the sales contracts — into a company Ball did not own, and he was already trying to put a factory under them. One of those moves worked for about a year. The other one failed in Kansas, and until now this expert could not say whether it had been serious.

The entity

A clipping from the Denison Press of 10 December 1936, reporting the plant’s reopening under its new owner, gives the title in passing:

“According to Chas. R. Tips, president of Tips Glass Sales corporation, in charge of Three Rivers sales, sufficient orders have been received to insure maintenance of this 24-hour daily schedule for several months to come.” [@ev-0040, p. 15]

The collector who assembled the clipping reads the demotion correctly and says so on the page: “That is why Charles R. Tips is no longer the ‘President of Three Rivers Glass Company,’ and instead, ‘President of Tips Glass Sales corporation’” [@ev-0040, p. 15]. Kevin Mackey reports a second clipping, from the Light of 7 August 1936 — four months before the foreclosure — naming “Tips Glass Sales corporation, which sells all glass containers manufactured by the Three Rivers Glass factory” as a distinct entity with Tips as president [ev-0019]. That clipping itself is not held here; what is held is Mackey’s reading of it.

Tips’ own account, written in 1971, explains what the entity was for without ever naming it:

“When Ball Brothers took over the Three Rivers Glass Factory, I had personally gotten enough contracts with purchases of Glass Containers to run at full capacity at a profitable basis for the coming year. Ball Brothers operated the factory for one year to fill these contracts and then closed the factory down.” [@ev-0041, p. 44]

Mackey states the mechanism plainly: Tips, seeing the plant going, “split off the sales branch, Tips Glass Sales Corporation, so he and his sales crew could still profit. They sold the glass to bottlers, but as owners of the contracts, they had bargaining power to decide where, and by whom the glass was made” [ev-0019]. On his account the salesmen held roughly a million dollars of 1937 contracts, and to collect on them Ball had to run the Three Rivers plant and pay the men who had sold them [ev-0019]. This expert holds no contract, ledger or figure of its own to test the million against; it is Mackey’s, and it is offered as his.

What none of this settles is the question the entity’s own name raises. Whether Tips Glass Sales was, before December 1936, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the factory, a dealer company owned separately by Tips and other principals, or an arm’s-length sales agent is not established by anything held here, and Mackey — who raised the question — does not answer it either [ev-0019].

Kansas

The second move is the one that has changed. Mackey describes it as manoeuvring: Tips “had also formed another glass company, Tips Glass Company, formed Oct. 1936, with no plant to produce the glass. Tips was making feints to get a factory, to help give him more leverage with the glass contracts, also with the possibility to open a factory to employ the Three Rivers workers. A feint was made for a Caney Kansas plant in Sept. 1936” [ev-0019].

The trial record does not describe a feint. In the federal antitrust case, Hartford-Empire’s licensing executive Arthur T. Safford Jr. was examined about a letter of 5 September 1936 from Hartford’s Texas attorney, and the question put to him assumes an operating plant:

“Q. Now, Exhibit 5740, Mr. Safford, refers, in the first couple of paragraphs, to the activities of Mr. Tips in operating a glass plant at Caney, Kansas. Did he have a license with Hartford for that plant? A. No, he didn’t. Q. Did Hartford take any action in the matter, one way or the other? A. It is my recollection that the matter died a natural death, as Tips could not raise money enough to continue the operation of that plant.” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10215]

Three things follow. The plant was operating, not merely optioned, at least in the understanding of the company whose machines Tips would have needed. Tips was running it without a Hartford licence — the same unlicensed-competitor position that had cost him at Three Rivers. And the venture ended for want of capital rather than for want of intent.

That last point is corroborated from the opposite end of the company by a man who lost money in it. John Matthijetz, writing to the marker committee in November 1971: “After the company was sold to Ball Glass Corp. Mr. Tips attempted to organize another Glass Factory at Houston, Texas. So much money was withheld from my pay check each week and I received 5 shares of stock in the new company which never got started” [@ev-0041, p. 57]. A worker says weekly deductions bought stock in a company that never started; Hartford’s executive says the plant died because Tips could not raise the money. The two accounts have nothing in common except the shortfall, and they agree about it.

Matthijetz enclosed the certificate, and it is legible in the binder. It is a Tips Glass Company certificate — “Incorporated Under the Laws of Texas” — for five shares of no-par common stock, number 005571 [@ev-0041, p. 58]. So the shares he bought by payroll deduction were in the entity that took the Kansas plant, whatever he remembered about Houston. Two details on the certificate should be recorded rather than smoothed: the holder is typed as “JOHN MATTHAEUS,” not Matthijetz, and the transcription of the date reads “this the 15th day of DECEMBER, A.D. 1960” — a year that cannot be right for a company formed in October 1936 and dead soon after, but which this expert has not resolved, having no access to the image [@ev-0041, p. 58].

What the September file shows

Placing Safford’s testimony beside the documents this expert already holds puts a single week of September 1936 in an unpleasant light.

On the 5th, Hartford’s Texas attorney S. S. Searcy writes to Safford about Tips’ activities at Caney [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10215]. On the 12th, William C. Church circularises the receiver’s creditors as attorney for the holders of the first mortgage notes, withholding the buyer’s identity [ev-0059]. On the 14th, Church writes to Searcy that Ball Brothers is the prospective purchaser and “has asked us to get you and the Hartford-Empire Company to assist him in purchasing the Three Rivers Plant” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10216]. On the 15th, Searcy forwards both of Church’s letters to Hartford [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10215 and following].

So while Tips was trying to get a plant under his contracts in Kansas, the same Texas attorney who was reporting his movements to Hartford was receiving, and passing on, the plan to sell the Texas plant to Ball. Nothing held here shows Tips knew. The Kansas venture reads differently once the calendar is laid out: not a bargaining posture taken from strength, but a man building a fallback while the ground was being cut behind him.

Texas Industrial Investment Company

A third name belongs here and is the least understood. Mackey records that “Three Rivers Glass Sales,” of Three Rivers, changed its name and location to “Texas Industrial Investment Company,” Houston, under Texas state charter, effective 10 July 1937, and calls it “a separate entity” [ev-0019]. Since Matthijetz’s shares were in Tips Glass Company, this Houston charter is not obviously the vehicle he paid into, despite the Houston in his letter. Note also that the entity renamed is called Three Rivers Glass Sales, not Tips Glass Sales — whether those are the same company under two names, or two companies, is not established here.

What this expert does not hold

• The corporate filings. Nothing from the Texas Secretary of State for Tips Glass Sales, Tips Glass Company, Three Rivers Glass Sales, or Texas Industrial Investment Company. This is the single acquisition that would answer the structure question, and it has not been made.
• Defendants’ Exhibit H-5740 — Searcy’s letter of 5 September 1936, whose opening paragraphs describe Tips at Caney. This expert holds the question put about it and the answer given; it does not hold the letter.
• The Kansas newspaper record. The lease itself, the name of the plant’s owner, and the terms are not held. A second stock certificate in another employee’s name has been reported to exist but is not held here either; Lonnie Stewart appears in this expert’s holdings only as one of the factory’s truck drivers [@ev-0041, p. 59].
• The 7 August 1936 clipping from the Light, which is quoted here at one remove [ev-0019].
• Any Three Rivers sales contract, and therefore any independent test of the million-dollar figure.