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concepts · updated 2026-07-25

Tips Glass Sales Corporation

confidence: medium volatility: cold verified: 2026-07-25fresh

The sales entity Charles R. Tips ran, distinct from the Three Rivers Glass factory itself, after losing the plant to Ball Brothers Glass Company in the December 1936 foreclosure. Tips continued selling under contracts he had already secured; a parallel attempt to fund a new Houston-based glass venture through employee payroll deductions never got off the ground. Its precise pre-foreclosure legal structure is still unresolved.

Tips Glass Sales Corporation was a sales entity tied to Charles R. Tips and the Three Rivers Glass Company factory, but distinct from it. When Tips lost control of the physical plant to Ball Brothers Glass Company in the December 1936 Ball Brothers Foreclosure and Antitrust Case, this sales corporation — and at least two related, ultimately unsuccessful ventures — were his mechanism for staying in the glass business. Its exact pre-foreclosure corporate structure is still not established from sources compiled so far, but its post-foreclosure function is now well corroborated.

What Is Known

A 1936-08-07 issue of “the Light” (a newspaper, per Kevin Mackey’s July 2026 correspondence) names “Tips Glass Sales corporation, which sells all glass containers manufactured by the Three Rivers Glass factory” as a distinct entity, with Tips as president — confirming the corporation existed and functioned as the sales arm for the factory’s output by mid-1936, before the December 1936 foreclosure.

A December 10, 1936 Denison Press article, reprinted in Kevin Mackey’s 2017 article collection, corroborates this directly: reporting the plant’s reopening under new ownership, it identifies “Chas. R. Tips, president of Tips Glass Sales corporation, in charge of Three Rivers sales.” Mackey’s annotation explains the title change plainly: “This is the re-opening under Ball Brothers after they had bought the outstanding mortgage through a crooked lawyer and forced the take over. That is why Charles R. Tips is no longer the ‘President of Three Rivers Glass Company,’ and instead, ‘President of Tips Glass Sales corporation.’”

This matches Tips’ own account of the aftermath (see Ball Brothers Foreclosure and Antitrust Case): “I had personally gotten enough contracts with purchasers 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.” Tips Glass Sales Corporation is best understood as the vehicle for that: Tips held the customer contracts even after Ball held the plant.

The Open Question: Pre-Foreclosure Corporate Structure

Whether Tips Glass Sales was, before December 1936, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Three Rivers Glass, an exclusive-dealer entity owned separately by Tips and other principals, or an arm’s-length contractual sales agent is not pinned down by the sources compiled so far. A Texas Secretary of State corporate-filings search for “Tips Glass Sales” covering 1933–1937 remains the suggested next step to resolve this narrower question — its function after the foreclosure is now clear, but its original legal relationship to the factory is not.

  • A new Houston-area glass factory attempt. Former Three Rivers Glass employee John Matthijetz’s November 16, 1971 letter to Thelma Lindholm states plainly: “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.” This independently corroborates, from a rank-and-file employee’s perspective, that Tips tried and failed to relaunch manufacturing after the foreclosure — funded in part by payroll withholding in exchange for equity. The stock certificate Matthijetz enclosed with his letter, now legible in the vision transcription (scan 58), is a Tips Glass Company certificate for five shares of no-par common stock — tying his Houston-venture shares to the Tips Glass Company entity described below rather than to a separately named company. (The OCR reads the certificate’s issue year as “1960,” almost certainly a misread; December 15, 1936 would fit both the company’s October 1936 formation and Matthijetz’s August 1936–1937 employment.)
  • Tips Glass Company — formed October 1936 (i.e., shortly before the foreclosure), with no plant of its own. Consistent with the leverage strategy described above: Tips reportedly made feints toward acquiring a factory (including a possible plant in Caney, Kansas, in September 1936), which would have both strengthened his contract-negotiating position and offered a path to re-employ Three Rivers workers.
  • Texas Industrial Investment Company — “Three Rivers Glass Sales,” Three Rivers, changed its name and location to “Texas Industrial Investment Company,” Houston, under Texas state charter, effective July 10, 1937. Since Matthijetz’s certificate shows his shares were in Tips Glass Company, this Houston-chartered entity appears to be a separate maneuver (Mackey calls it “a separate entity”); its exact relationship to the Houston factory attempt is not yet resolved.

Confidence Note

Upgraded from low to medium: the corporation’s existence and its function after the December 1936 foreclosure are now corroborated across three independent sources (Mackey’s July 2026 email, the December 1936 Denison Press clipping, and Tips’ own 1971 letter) plus a fourth independent witness (Matthijetz) for the related Houston venture. The July 2026 vision re-transcription of the marker research binder made Matthijetz’s enclosed stock certificate legible, identifying his shares as Tips Glass Company stock and thereby linking the Houston venture to that entity. What remains unresolved is narrower still: the pre-foreclosure legal structure of Tips Glass Sales, and how “Texas Industrial Investment Company” relates to the Tips Glass Company effort.

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