TWO—E

 

THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN

 

Paper Needs of Mi

Oklahoma City Personnel Exceeds 70,

With Experts in the Trade Directing
Company's Widespread Local Activity

No business grows and prospers without efficient management.
That, obviously, is one explanation of the Carpenter Paper
Co., success, for from ‘its inception in Omaha in 1886 it has had
efficiency, business foresight and a high concept of business
ethics and fair dealing. Starting at the top, these principles and
policies have filtered down through all the various subdivisions.
The company’s Oklahoma branch has just moved into a mod-
ern new home which the executives like to regard as a monu-

ment to square dealing and efficient merchandising.

The firm’s

line of goods has been and is important, but its officers agree that
employe personnel cannot be rated toa highly.

New Plant Design
Adds Speed To
Company Service

Building Provides
Ample Space For
Paper Storage

Functionalism is the architectural
keynote of the Carpenter Paper Co.,
new home at 860 Northwest Second
atreet.

It was designed and built to serve
the peculiar needs of a business which
deals in vast quantities of bulky and
weighty merchandise. And _ paper,
however feathery a sheet or two may
be, takes on weight rapidly when you
deal in reams and truck loads and
carloads and train loads.

The Carpenter plant was designed
by Sorey, Hill and Sorey, local archi-
tects, after a long study of the com-
pany’s needs. The latest paper plants
elsewhere were inspected; and with
this data and from Carpenter’s nota-
tions on what it wanted the designers
went to work.

Storage space was the main requis-
ite. The company does no processing
or manufacturing here, but it keeps
great quantities of paper in all shapes
and sizes on hand. To accommodate
this, the building was designed with
a total floor area of 72,000 square
feet. Except for 5,500 square feet de-
voted to office space, all this is for
storage.

Floors Are Heavy

The building is two full floors with
over-all dimensions of 255 by 140 feet.
It has a buff brick exterior and has
unusually heavy interior reinforcing
to carry the heavy loads required. The
warehouse floors are built to carry
350 pounds to the square foot. i

The functional design results. in
some peculiar exterior lines, most no-
ticeable of which is a wide, curving
bulge that gives it a super-modernis-
tic appearance. Modernism, though,
had no place in the architects’ plans.
They simply built a building around
the needs of the company, and that’s
the way it came out. 5

Office space is confined in what is,
im effect, a wide corridor along the
north or Second street side. Extend-
ing from the main entrance on the
north, the sales organization wing ex-
tends eastward. The private office of
Ralph R. Moser, vice-president and
general manager, is at the left end of
the main wing. On the west side of
the main entrance is the business
wing, for the bookkeeping and ac-
counting departments.

Many Display Rooms

A number of smaller show rooms
flank the main office on the south.
Here are display cabinets and
tables for all the myriad lines
Carpenter handles. There is a paper
library, a division which handles thou-
sands of printed forms on every con-
ceivable subject in which printers
or advertising experts can get ideas
for anything from a calling card to
roadside billboards.

All the offices are finished in birch
wood, natural finish, with modern
flourescent lighting. New steel furni~
ture has been installed throughout.

The main warehouse has numerous
features planned especially to simpli-
fy work. Practically all stock comes
in by rail and is unloaded by gravity
from freight cars set on the com-
pany’s own siding. Steel chutes carry
bundles down to the main warehouse
floor where they are stored until time
for shipment to customers.

‘ Natural Lighting Available

This eliminates a lot of elevator
and trucking handling. The ware-
house has natural lighting, a sawtooth
skylight arrangement letting in plenty
of north light without the glare and
heat of direct sunlight.

The truck loading docks are on a
level with truck beds to facilitate this
phase of the handling, and an in-
tercommunicating system links all
parts of the warehouse with the front
office. The whole plant has an auto-
matic fire sprinkler system.

Construction contract on the plant
was signed last November 4, and the
company moved in from its old Grand
avenue headquarters the second week
in May. Ellis, Nicholson and Cra-
mer were the general contractors.

Rare Early Papers
Made Valuable Gifts

In its infancy, paper was such a
rarity it was deemed a valuable gift.
There is a legend that Henry Wet-
more, who built the first paper mill
west of the Allegheny mountains in
1830, celebrated the completion of his
task by getting married. For a wed-
ding present he gave his wife a bun-
dle of newly made paper, and she was
the envy of all the women in the
neighborhood.

‘Raggs and Ropers’

In 1763 the owners of a mill in,

Massachusetts petitioned the court
and described their work in making
paper and employing people “in pick-
ing up raggs and ropes of which pa-
per is made” and asking a bounty for
their “encouragement of this mys-
tery.”

Few large businesses operat-
ing over a wide territroy localize
themselves as completely as does
Carpenter. It makes a fetish of
this influence. It employes local
workmen; the local management
is empowered to make decisions
in virtually all business prob-
lems; purchases of materials
and supplies are made locally in
so far as possible—in short, each
branch is encouraged to func-
tion as a local organization.

The company has 74 employes on
its payroll in Oklahoma City now,
and of these, 20 wear service pins of
10 years or longer. Many of them
own their own homes and carry their
full share of civic responsibility. They
are urged to take part in community
campaigns and to serve wherever
possible in church, school and all
civic circles.

The Oklahoma City branch is
headed by men who know the paper
business. Most of them have grown
up with it. They came up the hard
way, starting in humble capacities
where the work was tough. But the
expanding organization offered op-
portunity for advancement about as
rapidly as ability was demonstrated.

Ralph Moser at Head

Head of the Oklahoma organization
is Ralph R. Moser, vice-president and
general manager. He has been in
some phase of the paper or printing
business since he was an elementary
school student, and his record with
Carpenter dates back to 1920.

A native of St. Louis, he came to
Oklahoma City in 1904, returned to
the Missouri metropolis a year later
and then came back to Oklahoma
Reman DUy) in 1909. During his
grade and™highschool years here he
worked in various capacities for the
Warden Printing Co., and returned to
that organization for a brief stay
after a term of military service in
World war I.

Covers Much of State

That same, year, 1920, he joined
the Kansas City Paper House, a
forerynner of the Carpenter branch
here, fas a warehouse laborer. This
job led a few months later to a trav-
eling salesman’s post. From this point
on he was building up an acquaint-
ance throughout the state which now
is probably as extensive as that of
any individual. At one time or an-
other he has covered practically all
of Oklahoma.

In 1928 Moser was made sales man-
ager, and in- 1931 he stepped into
the general manager’s chair when
death removed L. F. Leach, Carpen-
ter’s first big time executive in Ok-
lahoma. Keeping a finger on the
ramified operations of the local house
now apparently isn’t enough, for
Moser lately has taken charge of
sales and merchandising in the Dal-
las, Fort Worth and Lubbock terri-
tories. These latter function under
Oklahoma City division headquarters.

Busy Outside, Too

Restless and energetic, Moser has
been about as busy outside his of-
fice as in. He has carried the ball
in all civic drives for 15 years or
more and has been high in the coun-
cils of the Chamber of Commerce,
Rotary and various trade organiza-
tions. He now is a director of the
chamber of commerce; he is a past
president of the Oklahoma City Rot-
ary club, past president of the
Wholesalers and Manufacturers as-
sociation, and a tireless committee
worker on all the community events
that come along.

One of his two sons graduated this
spring from Classen and has now
gone to work in the company’s Dal-
las house. The family home is at
1906 Northwest Seventeenth street.

Credit’ manager of the company
here is H. G. Bauers, who started as

(Continued on Page 8, Column 4)

dwest Served b

 

A great amount of trimming and cutting of paper is done
in the Carpenter plant. Paper comes in from the mill in
great sheets and rolls. Carpenter tailors it to fit the various

 

 

big package of paper.

sizes its customers require. Here, a powerful cutting machine
is at work, while on a nearby bench a workman opens another

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Company Starts In
Oklahoma in 1908.

First Warehouse Is
Opened at Guthrie

The Carpenter Paper Co. has been
serving Oklahoma virtually from the
time of the run.

The parent organization was
founded in Omaha only three years
before that historic cannon shot on
the Kansas border in April, 1889. Car-
penter salesmen began poking into the
territory as rapidly as settlements and
»prospective customers appeared.

At the turn of the century Car-
penter was doing a moderate business
hereabouts and supplying the trade
from its Kansas City branch. All
stock, of course, came down by rail.

A star salesman about that time
was the late L. F, Leach who worked
out of Kansas City and took over the
‘expanding Oklahoma territory. By
1908 his sales were running so high it
was decided to stock a permanent
warehouse from which deliveries could
be made more rapidly.

Leach acquired some storage space
in Guthrie, put in a stock and began
pushing sales all the harder. From
1908 to 1916 Guthrie served as head-
quarters for the company operations.
It was still just a branch of the Kan-
sas City Paper House, with Leach as
manager.

Business expanded into newer and
more remote corners of the state, and
Carpenter salesmen by fail and on
horseback, by stage and behind their
own teams followed-the trail of new
business throughout Oklahoma. Com-
pany personnel expanded here as
business warranted.

Oklahoma City’s increasing com-
mercial importance, plus the likeli-
hood that it would continue to grow,
promoted another move in 1908. The
company rented a three-story brick
building at the corner of First street
and Robinson—the Ramsey Tower
stands .on the site now—and moved
its Guthrie stock down in the early
summer of 1908. Leach came along as

 

manager. The first headquarters had

(Continued on Page 4, Column 7)

 

 

   

G. E. Carpenter
Vice-President

Headquarters of the Carpenter Paper Co.

are at Omaha,

where these officers direct the activity of the far-flung paper

 

H, F, Field
¥.-Pres, and Treasurer

The Present Chief—and the First

  

Ralph R. Moser (left) is vice-president and general man-
ager of the Carpenter Paper Co., of Oklahoma. He is a vet-
eran of 21 years with the organization. First head of the Car-
penter business in the state was the late L. F, Leach (right),
who founded the branch in Guthrie in 1908. (See story in
column 3. Other personnel pictures, Page 10.)

  

 

New Plant Open This Week

The new Carpenter Paper Co. home will be open
for inspection by customers and the general public at
specified times this week. The open house schedule:

Wednesday, June 11, 7 p. m. to 10 p. m.
Retailers and their affiliates (by invitation).

Thursday, June 12, 7 p. m. to 10 p. m.

The public is cordially invited to see the entire
plant. No invitations necessary.

Friday, June 13, 6 - m to 10 p. m.

Publishers, stationers and printers (by invitation.)

 

 

I. W. Carpenter jr.
President

empire. However, all the various branches, of which the Okla-
homa branch is one, have wide managerial powers, and man-

Paper Has Endless
Variety of Uses

Vast Stock Is Kept
In City Warehouse

Paper has an endless
| uses in modern life.

| In the home, in the office, in the!
| factory, in the store, in the school—
everywhere.

It is a relatively bulky commodity |
that requires considerable processing.
That is, from the time it comes from
a mill as a continuous sheet of paper
it must undergo cutting, trimming,
printing, shaping, pasting and various
other manufacturing steps before it
is ready for the consumer.

The retail grocer on the corner near
your home doesn’t want to buy plain
brown paper from a mill, cut it to
the required size and paste it into the
sacks in which you carry your sugar
and potatoes.

The bakery that bakes your bread
doesn’t want to coat paper with wax,
print fancy trade’ names in various
colors and otherwise fix it up before
he can wrap his product in it. The
corner drug store can’t manufacture
the paper picnic plates, the boxes of
letter paper, the rolls of cleansing
tissue it sells.

All of .these processing jobs are
done in factories that buy plain paper
from the mill and fabricate them into
the millions of commercial paper
products now on the market.

Neither does your grocer or baker
or druggist want to go to the trouble
of buying his sacks from one factory,
his paper plates from another, his let-
ter paper from still another.

It is much easier, much cheaper
and much better all around to order
all his products from one merchant
which makes paper his business and
has a complete line of goods made of
paper or allied products,

To fulfill this need, the modern
paper house or..paper company has
been developed. The Carpenter Paper

variety of

 

Co. is the largest of its kind in the

southwest and has been supplying |

 

(Continued on Page 4, Column 1)

SUNDAY, JUNE 8, 1941.

y Carpenter Since 1886

Started in Omaha, Business Has Grown
To An Empire Now Busy in 17 States;
Sons of Founder Continue in Control

Most successful businesses are the lengthened shadow of one
man—a fact which has been recognized and commemorated by
epigram and story for a long, long time.

Other men have an important part, to be sure; but some-
where along the way—often in the beginning, sometimes later—
is one man whose vision, ability and energy lay the foundations

of a great institution.

In the case of Carpenter Paper Co., the

man was the late Isaac W. Carpenter.

The senior Carpenter founded the business and was its guid-
ing light for almost 50 years. Ill health forced him into semi-
retirement a few years before his death in 1925, but he took a
keen and active interest in business affairs to the last.

One of the hallowed rituals in *

the Carpenter organization for
years was the founder’s annual
letters to all his subordinates,
sent out on each anniversary of
his entry into the paper busi-
ness. The last one was written
July 14, 1925.

In the previous 49 years he saw
the small paper sales company he
started grow to a dominant position
in the middle and far west. And his
policies and managerial talent were
largely responsible.

Carpenter was born on a farm near
Marengo, Ill., in 1856. The family was
large—six sons, two step-sons and a
daughter in addition to the two hard-
working farm parents. His early days
were typical of any farm boy’s life.
He carried his share of the farm
load, and in later years attributed
much of his success to the rigorous
environment which taught him to
work hard—and enjoy it.

Off to Chicago

He acquired an elementary school
education in those days, and when
he was 20 years old decided to leave
the farm and go to work. The panic
of 1873 had jolted the business world
as well as the farmer, and there had
been some tough times on the Marengo
acres,

Nearby Chicago was the commercial
magnate of the surrounding territory,
and in 1876 young Carpenter struck
out for the growing city. It happened
that a cousin of his was manager of
a small paper company in Chicago,
and Carpenter sought work from him.
He got a job as shipping clerk at $8
a week, and thus was the life work
of the future founder and president

| of the Carpenter Paper Co., deter-

mined.
No Soft Snap Then

The work was hard and the hours
were long. Few of the power machines
which now cut, trim, stamp, pack,
wrap and carry paper were in use; and
a prime requisite anywhere around the
plant was a strong back and tough
hands. Carpenter recalHed, too,
working conditions were not ideal.

“My employer was a hard taskmas-
ter,” he wrote, “and many times I
had plenty of excuse to resign on ac-
count of harsh language used relative
to myself and my work. But I stuck
for 11 years with that house until I
acquired a fair knowledge of the ‘pa-
per business.

Encouraged by Isaac’s progress,
younger Carpenter brothers left the
farm and migrated to Chicago. George
obtained work with W. D. Messinger,
whose name still survives in the paper
trade; and Frank came along in 1880
and went to work in the coarse paper
department of the F. P. Elliott com-
pany.

With New Organization

Elliott some time before had ob-
sorbed the Ypsilanti Paper Co., which
was the original company with which
Isaac Carpenter had gone to work. He
had gone in with the new organization.
A few years after Frank joined the
Elliott forces, brother James came on
to Chicago and asked for a job. El-
liott, however, thought he had enough
Carpenters on the payroll and turned
him down. So with Isaac’s help Jim
established a line of credit to buy
wrapping paper and this he sold from
a wagon he drove about the city.

The brothers by this time were ex-
perienced in the paper business; and
the field was developing by leaps and
bounds as the country’s increasing
commercial life turned to paper for
more and more uses. They had saved
a little money and began looking
around for a way to get into business
on their own.

They thought of starting in Chi-
cago, but a paper manufacturer dis-
suaded them, They approached this
man with a request for supplies on

' credit. He told them his arrangements

 

Company Executives in Omaha Headquarters Have Had Long Experience in All Branches of the Paper Industry

 

J. A. Carpenter
Chairman of the Board

  

 

William F, Madden
Vice-President

agement is vested to an unusual degree in the local officials.
Three of these men are sons of the founder.

that |

 

The Company Seal

 

with the Elliott company prevented
him from extending it, and that Chi-
cago was well supplied with paper
houses anyhow. There was no deal so
far as Chicago was concerned.

But he also told them about a small
town out in Nebraska. It showed signs
of becoming quite a city; it had no
paper business, and he said if the
brothers would undertake to get start~
ed out there he would provide the
necessary credit.

Frank was delegated to investigate.
He looked around Omaha and some
other new towns in the middle and
northwest, and from his report the
decision was made to settle in the Ne-
braska metropolis. It was a wise move.

$11,000 to Begin

The brothers had some savings of
their own and they got some addi-
tional backing from their father, who
had sold part of his Illinois farm
and was willing to Joan them the pro-
ceeds. They had in ali about $11,000
when they moved into the straggling
frontier town of Omaha in 1886 and
rented an empty livery stable for $55
; &@ month.

Omaha developed rapidly as a rail-
road center and as the jobbing head-
quarters for a large new territory.
Foundations even then were being laid
for some important businesses, and
the Carpenter paper business grew
from the start. Merchants in Omaha
and adjacent territory were glad to
have a paper supply house in their
midst instead of having to depend on
shipments from Chicago or St. Louis.
They patronized the pioneer paper
men from the first, and Carpenter,
incidentally, takes pride to this day in
the fact that many of these original
customer-firms: are still on its books.

Incorporated in 1889

It was not until March, 1889, that
the brothers incorporated as the Car-
penter Paper Co. The first officers
were Isaac W., president; James A.,
vice-president; C.-L., treasurer; J. F.,
secretary. These men, with their
brother, George, comprised the board
of directors.

The company’s first printed price
list, published the year of incorpora-
tion, recorded many brands of paper
that. are still tops in the trade. The
Kimberly Clark Co., of Neenah, Wis.,
sold them their first carload of mer-
chandise.

Frank and Isaac alternated as road
salesmen and. city salesmen. They
quickly sewed up the Omaha trade
and branched out for that of the new,
raw west.

New Locations Needed

George eventually was assigned as
a@ permanent road salesman and he
pushed the Carpenter line into all
the towns along the Union Pacific
railroad. Fremont, Cheyenne, Denver,
Ogden, Salt -Lake City, Pocatello,
Butte and Anaconda became import-
ant commercial centers in which the
Carpenters drummed up business.

The original Omaha location was
quickly outgrown and in 1889 the
Carpenters moved into a five-story
building equipped with a power ele-
vator—which in those days was a hall-
mark of progress and prosperity. This
second location served until 1906,
when the company built a modern
eight story building in downtown
Omaha from which it has operated
ever since.

Meanwhile, the firm had been
branching out in other directions.

Paper is a bulky commodity that
requires storage space pending its
processing into the myriad shapes and
sizes demanded. by the consumer. The
Carpenters early saw the advantage of
warehouses at strategic points in their
territory, and in the natural course of
events began acquiring them.

 

House was started in 1902 with
Brother Jim in the driver’s seat. A
branch was opened in Lincoln, Neb., in
November, 1906, and the company got
started in Oklahoma in 1908 when a
salesman opened a small warehouse in
Guthrie. Oklahoma headquarters was
transferred to Oklahoma City in 1916,
and the Carpenter Paper Co., of Ok-

Mergers and Expansion
Thus it went. The San

 

Paper Co,, was organized in July, 1913,
to serve south Texas. A merger with
Carter, Rice and Co., of Denver in’

Paper Co., of Utah was formed in
January, 1910, with headquarters at
Salt Lake City, although Carpenter

Salt Lake City as early as 1903.
Sales were made on the Pacific coast

 

(Continued on Pase 8 Column

 

 

A Des Moines branch was opened
in 1896 with George Carpenter as
manager, and the Kansas City Paper

lahoma. was incorporated in July, 1931. _

Antonio —

1905 established them firmly in the -
Rocky mountain area. The Carpenter

had operated a distributing point in~

 

 

 

 

 

 

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