As we approach our 150th year in March 2023, we are honored that so many global companies rely on TydenBrooks to secure their supply chains and protect their valuable assets. For one-hundred and forty-nine years, Edward Brooks’ company has endured. The continuing story of our company’s success is one of resiliency, determination, and enduring strengths. Strengths like quality innovative security products, dedicated employees, and a realization that our customers keep us in business for one reason. To serve them well by protecting their precious cargo.
So today, in part two, our journey takes us through a challenging time for all Americans, with the Great Depression of the 1930s hitting just as the transition of ownership shifted from father to son, through World War II, and into the late 1960s. In 1928, Edward Brooks decided to pass the company to his son Winfred-a young man with ideas and drive. Slowly and carefully, Winfred Brooks began to build a modern company.
He added electric lights to the old brick building and the annex in 1923 at a cost of $1,027. In 1925, a trunk line of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western tracks behind the plant was installed. A new efficient heating system was installed in 1927. Finally, in 1929 the office was added to the plant and the Board of Directors reincorporated and restructured the company in New Jersey.
The new E.J. Brooks Company began on January 14, 1929, in the Brooks family home in East Orange. N.J. All the property of the parent company, including land, buildings, stock, patents and trademarks, bills, and employees were prepared for transfer. The new management was set. On March 14. 1929, all property transfer was formally completed, and the 55-year-old E.J. Brooks and Company quietly passed out of existence.
Edward Brooks died on May 31, 1930; Winfred became the Chairman of the Board and Treasurer while Ellen became the majority stockholder. When Ellen died on July 10, 1936, Elinor became Vice President, Secretary, and majority stockholder, and Winfred’s wife, Marcella, was named Assistant Secretary and member of the Board.
Newark, meanwhile, was reeling under unemployment. By 1933, more than one-third of the factories open in 1925 had dosed; 79,032 people were on relief; the city hired the unemployed to turn a canal into a subway by hand and to work on the new Pennsylvania Station. The Works Progress Administration was busy completing streets, sewers, sidewalks, and supervising the construction of the new Federal building.
MOVING AWAY FROM RAILROAD SUPPLIES
The E.J. Brooks Company was not faring badly. With the aid of a young and imaginative crew in the plant, Brooks was able to make the right changes in the company. In 1932, the main product line was altered from a concentration on selling railway supplies to producing metal specialties.
One of the specialties Brooks began with was the application of lead heads onto nails. Two shifts of workers were required to produce enough nails to fill the orders coming in from the South and West where they were used on tin roofs. Another specialty was wire. Before 1932, Brooks had purchased all the wire it needed. In 1932, the company purchased its first Wire Bunchers, machines that twisted wire strands together for the Lead and Wire Seals. This addition cut the cost of the Lead Seal, assured wire supplies, and added new jobs.
IMPROVING PROFITS
In 1933, profits stood at only $14,732, but by The RED CAP Coin Bag Seal in 1935 they had doubled, and in 1937 topped $31,000. The addition of a new building to hold dies and power presses at a cost of $7,770, generated a sales increase of $75,000 in 1938, and a contract with the Quality Tool and Die Company to produce a labor-saving machine for automatically threading sealing cords.
The two years before America’s entrance into World War II showed the company’s prosperity. The Board of Directors gave each employee a summer vacation. Water fountains were installed, along with a new boiler. The company made donations to the local forerunner to Blue Cross-Blue Shield and to Princeton University for engineering research. Then came Pearl Harbor, Sunday December 7, 1941.
Monday, December 8, the following request was received from the New York Ordnance Office of the War Department:
“Due to the present conditions with the possibility of plant sabotage, the following will immediately be put in effect: Night Watchmen, watchman’s clock with stations, the fingerprinting of all employees (both factory and office), daily records kept of truck drivers and guests. and employee employment records with birth certificates.”
The Brooks Company’s importance to the war effort stemmed from its oldest product, the Lead and Wire Seal. The seals were used to secure the Allied and American Forces’ ammunition boxes. Brooks was the only company equipped for the necessary output, hence the tight security. Sigurd Moberg, foreman of the Lead Room where the seals were made, saw to it that they were produced around the clock. He remembered that “during the war, the wire machines were a godsend. It was quite a challenge, and it was interesting. We felt a part of the war effort. We made some 13 million seals a month. We had a lot of fun, too”
FROM POULTRY TO PLASTIC
The strength of the E. J. Brooks Company had rested on its product-the Lead and Wire Seal. This small seal had launched the Company’s seal manufacturing business back in 1873. It had been used on utility meters to reduce tampering and throughout World War II by the Allied Forces to protect the ammunition. An adaptation of the seal was used by the J. F. Rhodes Company of San Francisco to seal milk cans.
The Sure Lock Door Seal, introduced in 1947 and stamped from sheet steel, proved to be a secure seal for freight cars and trailers. Production expanded as new dies were created to meet mounting orders. In 1952, the seal was adopted by the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, which carried manufactured goods over I0,000 miles of track through twelve states from Ohio to Florida. Two years later, orders surpassed production. In 1947. the United States Postal Department approved the Brooks All Metal Bag Seal for foreign Parcel Post Mail and ordered eight million more seals.
The success of this seal led to the production of the Foldover Hasp Seal Tag in 1958, designed specifically for Air Mail bags. Before 1949, the company had produced a small, bright steel seal, stamped with a customer’s name, for use by the poultry industry. With the adoption of mandatory government grading of poultry in many states during the late 1940s, the company decided to begin production of a Lithographed Seal. The new seal was meant to appeal to customers because of its advertising and labeling qualities. It worked. The seal was used by the suppliers who processed poultry for the mass market.
Poultry was an important market for Brooks, but Sigurd Moberg foresaw the industry shift from Metal Seals to paper tags, so the Brooks Company began to stress other products, including plastic seals. After customers accepted the first two plastic seals, the Griplock Coin Bag Seal and the Plastic Padlock, plastic seals were seen as the future of the Company. However, there were several difficulties to be overcome and years of research and development ahead. The plastic bodies were first bought from an outside molding shop, while metal and tape were prepared and combined with the plastic at the plant. This was expensive and uncertain.
SELLING “PLASTIC” TO THE PEOPLE
Marketing was also a problem. The public had to be won over to plastic, which was just beginning to be used as a replacement for many metal parts. It would not be until the 1970s that plastic seals would begin to show a profit and as predicted, become the future of the Brooks Company. In the South, Jack Kehoe began more frequent visits to utilities, which were seeking new sealing methods. Always a major market for Brooks seals, utilities increased in their importance in the South as population and industry increased throughout the region.
Beyond development, production, and sale of its seals, the E. J. Brooks Company protected its products by securing patents for new items and then making sure these patents were not infringed upon. Management changes within the company at this time reflect product development. Russel Snow, Sr. was named Executive Vice President in 1953 and President in 1959, his conservative policies shaped the company during these years. He had begun his career with the company as a clerk in 1909. He quickly learned the business and was found to be an excellent worker with a good business sense. He was appointed Sales Manager in 1930, and General Manager during World War II.
Robert Learned spent many years in the shadow of Russel Snow, Sr. in the Sales Department. Snow, as Sales Manager, had hired Learned during the early 1930s as part of the restructuring program. When Snow moved on to be General Manager, Learned became Sales Manager. Snow still directed much of the department’s work and oversaw the government contracts. It was not until 1963 that Learned became the General Sales Manager, when as part of the effort to increase business, the Sales Department was expanded.
SHIFTS IN THE SALES DEPARTMENT
Learned had helped train the two men who moved up to fill his position: Russel Snow, Jr, as Sales Manager and H. Thomas Moffet as Assistant Sales Manager. Russel continued the successful electric-utility program begun by Jack Kehoe in Georgia. Learned decided to send Moffet from Newark to California to work with the J. F. Rhodes Company, Brooks’ West Coast agent. The difficulty of supporting two companies selling the same products in the same region was seen as necessary to regain the business lost to the United Seal Company of Columbus, Ohio, and the Porter Seal Company of Chicago.
After a few months Moffet saw the need for and the advantage of having a Coin Bag Seal assembly plant on the West Coast instead of shipping the seals across the country. His attempt to establish a plant in Tijuana, Mexico failed under the red tape set up by the Mexican and American governments. With the venture floundering in less than a year, Russel Snow, Sr. went to Moffet and asked him to return to Newark; all orders would again be overseen by the Rhodes Company.
Moffet decided not to trade the warm climate of southern California for the unpredictable Northeast and resigned. To replace Moffet in the Newark office, Learned and Russel Snow, Jr. hired John K. Roessner III, a young man who would be particularly important to the future and survival of the company in just a few years. Learned worked until his retirement in May of 1965.
Russel Snow, Jr., a World War II Navy veteran, and survivor of Corregidor, joined Brooks in 1946 as a cub salesperson. Through hard work and a determined, while relaxed attitude, he increased sales to utilities and banks. In 1960, as a result of his good work, he became Assistant Sales Manager and advanced to Sales Manager in 1964. Russel Snow, Jr. had the resources to boost sales. He slowed, almost halted, declining sales with the innovative Griplock Coin Bag Seal, the Plastic Padlock, and by substituting rayon for cording in the Economy Cap Coin Bag Seal. He published booklets that stressed Brooks’ metal stamping and printing versatility and hired new salespeople. His hard work, however, showed little effect because of losing the Poultry Seal trade to paper labels and the Milk Can Seal to plastic bags.
In 1968 Winfred Brooks saw that the difficulties of the ’60s were becoming unmanageable. But this time he was not in a position, nor of the temperament, to act. His devotion to the company as Chairman was tempered by his age and health. He was 83 and had suffered a stroke. He worked only half days when he could work at all. Russel Snow, Sr. was in the position to make the change, but he was hindered by his own conservatism toward his sales program and the continuing lack of a new product range to make up for the loss of the dairy and poultry trades.
This situation resulted in a company that wanted to improve, had taken some steps toward that goal (Russel Snow, Jr.’s sales work), but lacked the strong and aggressive leadership to make the big moves. Russel Snow, Jr. resigned in May 1968 after the Directors replaced him with Robert Huck, the company’s Chicago-area salesperson who had shown an ability to increase sales and promised to double the company’s sales.
MANAGEMENT SHIFTS IN THE LATE 60’S
Shortly before Russel Snow, Jr. resigned, a long series of management shifts began. When Winfred Brooks examined the financial condition of his company early in 1968, he was not at all pleased with what he found. He then asked his good friend, Leslie G. McDouall, a Vice-President at the Fidelity Union Trust Company, to examine the records. After joining the Board of Directors as Vice-Chairman in May of 1968. McDouall instituted changes that included replacing Snow, Jr. with Robert Huck, and appointing Sigurd Moberg the Vice-President -Production. (He had been the Plant Manager since 1945; the new title did not alter his job very much).
These changes caused Russel Snow, Sr. to reassess his own position at Brooks. After almost 60 years of service and 10 years as President, Snow decided to retire at the end of December 1968. Winfred Brooks wanted Sigurd Moberg to become President, but Moberg was reluctant. He was unsure of his ability to manage the financially troubled company; all his experience had been in product development and manufacturing. To help Moberg, McDouall and Brooks hired James Rifflard as Controller to manage the finances. Moberg then agreed and took his position at the head of the management staff.
The changes in this period were not completed with Sigurd Moberg’s promotion to President in January 1969 but rather concluded suddenly a few months later. On the morning of April 4 Winfred Brooks died, leav1ng the Board in the control of the Fidelity Union Trust Company (as Executor of both his and his sister’s wills) and his wife, Marcella.
ln the space of a year, the management face of the E. J. Brooks Company had changed entirely. Marcella Brooks, now majority stockholder, served reluctantly as Chairman of the Board. Leslie G. McDouall was the final voice as Vice-Chairman. Sigurd Moberg and James Rifflard shared the day-today business of production and finance, respectively. Robert Huck, as Sales Manager, was to generate the sales to create a profitable position.
Facing these men were several problems. Profits for 1968 were in the red by almost $60,000, general material and production costs were increasing, and there were the expensive development costs involved with the switch. As Robert Huck had promised, sales were increasing – up $ 110,000 over 1968, but unit sales were down, and costs were still rising steadily so the increase was deceiving.
A HARD LOOK AT FISCAL POLICY
While the business moved sluggishly, the Board of Directors and the outside auditing firm were taking steps to redefine and strengthen the company. In March of 1969, the Board decided to omit the capital stock dividends for that period to finance a new plastic molding machine and to suspend the payment of common stock dividends to conserve working capital. This working capital was specifically stated to cover the cost of current and future contracts that were especially important to Brooks. This action was followed in September, with the submission of auditors’ reports and a report prepared by Leslie McDouall.
These reports led to the realization that sales had increased only $100,000 between 1961 and 1967 despite three price increases. This meant that the number of physical items sold had declined. The reports also showed that there had been inventory inaccuracies between 1965 to 1968. This resulted in a gross understatement of profit and an overpayment of taxes. This error on the part of the company’s accountant, Joseph Seaman, was partially rectified by the IRS refunding $58,000 in overpaid taxes.
In addition, the Board decided to continue its policy of not paying dividends to cover current expenses and loan payments. This policy has proved fruitful: The capital conserved in anticipation of future contracts enabled Brooks to act promptly when it recaptured the Post Office Hasp-Lock contract.
Unfortunately, the picture had to become worse before there were improvements. The winter of 1969-1970 was perhaps the worst for the Brooks Company ever; Robert Huck was terminated in April and Leslie G. McDouall died suddenly in May. The Fidelity Union Trust Company chose Robert Dunker to replace McDouall as Vice-Chairman. Dunker, Senior Vice-President at the Fidelity Union Trust company and a member of two oilier Boards of Directors, set a basic policy that was designed to reorganize the company and get it back on an orderly base. He saw his responsibility as being to the beneficiaries of the trusts (Marcella Brooks and several long-term Brooks employees) and so searched and strove for the best alternatives.
Join us in the upcoming months as we share the next chapter of our company’s journey to 150 years!
