The Man Who Stayed

Charles Tips met him at a convention somewhere in the North and talked him into moving his family to a town of two thousand people in Live Oak County [@ev-0041, p. 18]. Fifteen years later R. A. Ellerman was still at the plant, writing to Muncie, Indiana as manager for the corporation that had taken it away from Tips [@ev-0059, Gov. Ex. 1211, part 16, fol. 60669]. Three regimes ran the Three Rivers Glass Factory — the company Tips built, the receivership that followed it, and Ball Glass Corporation — and this expert can put Ellerman inside all three, on the evidence of three sources that do not mention each other.

That continuity is the whole of what this article has to add. Every one of his letters is already read somewhere in this expert for what it says about somebody else: about Ball’s operating year, about Owens-Illinois’ pricing, about how the receivership was run. Nobody had put them in a row.

How he got there

Tips tells it twice and not quite the same way. In the long narrative he wrote for the marker research the meeting is a piece of luck on a sales trip:

On a trip to the North, where I frequently attended conventions of prospective customers, I was fortunate to meet Mr. Ellerman and persuaded him to come to Three Rivers with his lovely family. He had charge of the office and did our purchasing and collecting, and did a great job with the help of a small staff.

[@ev-0041, p. 18]

In the letter he wrote Thelma Lindholm in October 1971 it is a recruitment with a stated qualification: “I got her husband, Mr. R. A. Ellerman to come down from Ohio where he had worked for a Glass Factory and he was one of my right hand men and very capable during most of the time we were in operation” [@ev-0041, p. 43].

The two do not conflict — a man met at a northern convention may perfectly well have come from Ohio and a glass factory — but only the second says where he came from or that he knew the trade, and both are Tips remembering across forty years or more. Nothing else held here says where R. A. Ellerman was before Three Rivers.

The 1971 sentence is worth noticing for a second reason: it is not about him. Tips is telling Lindholm that “if Mrs. Ellerman is in Three Rivers at this time, she might have some detailed information that would be helpful” [@ev-0041, p. 43]. The fullest description of Ellerman anywhere in this record exists because Tips was recommending his wife as a source.

The office

Three documents in the marker research put him at the company’s paperwork, and the first of them is the only one that can be dated exactly.

On 15 March 1928 A. F. Tremblay sold Three Rivers Glass Company the bottle-forming machine he had built for it [ev-0051]. The bill of sale carries Tremblay’s signature and two witnesses: “R. A. Ellerman” and “M. E. Herring.” Tips accepted it on the company’s behalf as secretary and treasurer [@ev-0041, p. 48].

The undated personnel roster that David Jones recorded — the one this expert reads for the mold shop — gives the officers in a list, and against the last entry it has “Secretary and Treasurer, R.A.Ellerman” [@ev-0041, p. 53]. Jones’ own employment ran April 1929 through September 1930 and again 1932 through 1934, so the roster describes some point in that span. The office Tips signed under in March 1928 was Ellerman’s by then. When it changed hands, and whether the change had anything to do with Tips moving up, is not in anything held here — the date Tips became president is itself disputed in this record.

He signed for the company outside the office too. The marker research notes that Volume 43 of the Live Oak County record book, from page 359 through page 607, holds the factory’s truck leases, and that W. A. Orts’ lease “was signed by R.A.Ellerman, Secretary, Three Rivers Glass Factory” [@ev-0041, p. 59]. The trucking was Tips’ own innovation and, by his account, the company’s main advantage over out-of-state competitors [@ev-0041, p. 18]; the leases behind it were Ellerman’s signature.

Agent for the receiver

Bankruptcy proceedings began in October 1932 [ev-0042]. The Bottle Research Group’s chapter, working from a trade directory, records that the firm “was listed with ‘R.A. Ellerman, agent for receiver’ the following year” [ev-0042].

That is one line in one secondary work, and it is the thinnest link in this article. It is also the most consequential, because it is the only thing held here that says who was actually running the plant between Tips and Ball. This expert has drawn the obvious inference from it before — that the receivership was operated internally, by the company’s own officer, rather than by an outside trustee. That inference is still an inference. Nothing admitted states it, and the directory line does not say Ellerman kept any other title.

Manager, Ball Glass Corporation

Ball Glass Corporation took the property at auction in November 1936 [ev-0042]. By the summer of 1937 the letters going up from Three Rivers to Ball Brothers headquarters in Muncie are on Ball Glass Corporation letterhead and signed by the same man.

On 1 July 1937 he writes to F. J. Petty, assistant secretary at Muncie:

I am advised that Capstan and Hazel Atlas Glass Companies are quoting modernistic jars the same price as their pantry jars. This is not according to our understanding. Our Houston salesman advises that The Bama Company is being quoted the modernistic jars at the same price as Pantry jar, which is $4.92 per gross.

He signs it “Ball Glass Corporation. R. A. Ellerman (Signed), Manager” [@ev-0059, Gov. Ex. 1211, part 16, fol. 60669].

Two weeks later, on 15 July, he asks B. E. Sutton at Muncie to “find out from Owens Illinois what they sold S[o]uthern Coffee and Products Company, Oklahoma City,” and signs again as manager [@ev-0059, Gov. Ex. 1213, part 16, fol. 60671]. Muncie answers him on 21 July, addressed to “Mr. R. A. Ellerman, Ball Glass Corporation, Three Rivers, Texas,” promising the information [@ev-0059, Gov. Ex. 1214, part 16, fol. 60672]. On 31 August, Petty replies to a further letter of his about Owens-Illinois and rail-and-barge freight differentials, and asks him to report any customer offered the arrangement [@ev-0059, Gov. Ex. 1215, part 16, fol. 60673].

Four exhibits, eight weeks, one subject: competitors quoting below an understanding. They were produced under subpoena in a federal antitrust case and printed in its transcript of record because of what they show about pricing, not because of who wrote them. That they also constitute the last documented act of a fifteen-year career at this plant is incidental to the purpose they were gathered for, which is why they were available to be read this way at all.

What the file leaves open

His letter of 20 August 1937 is not here. Petty’s reply of 31 August answers it explicitly, and the extract this expert holds reproduces the reply and not the letter [@ev-0059, Gov. Ex. 1215, part 16, fol. 60673]. The extract covers four of the transcript’s fifty-eight parts [ev-0059]; the missing letter may be in the printed record and outside what was taken.

Whether it is one man. The identification running through this article is made on initials, surname, town and plant, across three record types that never refer to one another: Tips’ recollection, a trade directory as reported by a later secondary work, and a subpoenaed corporate file. It is a strong identification and this expert makes it. It is not a stated fact anywhere in the evidence, and no document held here connects the Ellerman of Tips’ office to the Ellerman of Ball’s letterhead.

What he thought about any of it. Tips lost the plant to Ball Brothers through what he described as a betrayal by an attorney [@ev-0041, pp. 19, 44], and the man he had personally recruited and called one of his right hand men then ran that plant for Ball. In October 1971, writing about the whole affair, Tips recommends Mrs. Ellerman as a helpful source and says nothing else about it [@ev-0041, p. 43]. Whether that silence means there was nothing to say, or that Tips did not know, or that he knew and did not mind, is not recoverable from anything held here.

What this expert does not hold about him

His given names — the initials are never expanded in any source held. His dates, birthplace, and where he went after 1937. Which Ohio glass factory, if Ohio is right. Mrs. Ellerman’s name; she is the reason the fullest account of him survives, and she appears in it only as a wife who might know something. Whether Lindholm ever reached her, and if so what she said: no such interview is in the marker research this expert holds.