Who Was It?
In 1919 an old inventor,
noted for his patented fruit jar, tried to resurrect his career by asking the
Ball Brothers to make his jar. Here is a
transcript of the original letter in Minnetrista’s collection:
Ball
Bros. Glass Manuf. Co. Jan’ 2nd 1919
Dear Sirs: I am using some 400 of your make of jars.
Some Mason and the rest of your Lightning fastener. I am enclosing a card of a jar invented by me
in 1881. I had a 3 year contract with a
partner and 5 factories made the jar for us, in that time we sold 200,000
dollars worth. He cheated me out of my
share of profits and I tied it up. He is
dead now. I made all the trimmings for
the fasteners. It is absolutely the best
fruit keeper I ever used. I get orders
every year for them, but fill them I cannot.
I thought possibly you might take a notion to manufacture some. I have all the tools to make the
fasteners. They can be made cheap and
are perfect fasteners. We sold over
16,000 dollars worth of jars in
Yours truly,
I have left off the
signature, to make you wonder and maybe do some thinking. Who was this old jar maker? Ball Brothers responded to this letter by asking
him to send a sample jar. Did Ball
eventually make his jar? Find out in
next month’s Glass Chatter.
This
article first appeared in the September 2002 issue of the Glass Chatter.