Depression's Got A Hold On Me

Well, you learn something new every other day or so I guess.  I was poking around newspapers.com a while back and spotted a very interesting article from the Brooklyn Times-Union October 30, 1933 edition concerning the long-time HQ of the American Leaf Tobacco Company (ALTC) at 7 Debevoise St., which my intrepid readers know as the primordial Shorin family company's second location:

I do believe the ALTC survived as an ongoing entity until 1938 so this foreclosure notice is a very intriguing find. It appears the Shorins partnered with a couple of members of the Rabkin Family and together they owned the four story building that had housed the ALTC since around the time of World War 1. I have not seen any associations between the Shorin and Rabkin families before, so this bears some further investigation. The connection with a paper company is intriguing as well.

The building, as you can see, was auctioned on October 14, 1933 so it seems possible the ALTC continued to maintain a presence within as renters but again more research is needed on my end.  The Shorin's were starting to heavily invest in gas station properties around Brooklyn at this time, so there may have a been a plan in place for dumping losses into 7 Debevoise St., or they just got over-extended. Either way, this further supports some reports I have seen from this era concerning the family's real estate investments. The family and ALTC primarily did business with Manufacturer's Trust, so the Williamsburgh Saving Bank may have been brought to the table by the Rabkin's.

It Runs In The Family

A little over three months ago I started an in depth research project into the origins of Topps Chewing Gum, which turned into an article for Les Davis' The Wrapper after it became apparent to me that the official story of the company's beginnings was, in large part, made up. The further back in time I went, the more I found. Now that Les is on to selling his next issue (with another story by yours truly, this time concerning Warren Bowman) I can delve into the back story even more. Some of this repeats parts of the Wrapper article, some of it updates same and some of it is newly discovered since then.

The oft told story of family patriarch Morris Shorin founding the American Leaf Tobacco Company in 1890 and then, in a fit of desperation brought on by the Depression, betting the family fortune on chewing gum and installing his four sons to run Topps may have first been promulgated to the masses around 1972, when the company went public with a stock offering. The origins of this tale seem to go back a few more years though, when Topps was doing some PR work in the wake of a lawsuit brought by Fleer in the mid 60's but I am still digging into that particular aspect of the story and will report my findings here at a later date.

As detailed in a prior post, the American Leaf Tobacco Company was founded in Boston in 1890 by members of the Salomon family, two years before Morris emigrated to the U.S. from Russia. Furthermore, I am finding increasing evidence that Morris did not fully control ALTC until 1908, when he secured a bank loan for its purchase. Now, it is not unusual for corporations or individuals to embellish their history, indeed it occurs to this day. What surprised me though was that the true origins of the company paled in comparison to the true origins of Morris Shorin.

Morris arrived in the U.S. in July of 1892  1891 with the last name of Chigorinsky and he was legally known by this name until 1919, as were his wife and children, of which there were five sons, not four, at least until 1918 when his eldest, Moe, died in October of an unspecifed chronic ailment. There will be more written on Moe at some point but it is worth noting he was born in Russia and did not arrive in the U.S. until 1904. It is also worth noting the name change to Shorin happened after Moe's death and probably not until the surviving Chigorinsky boys had completed their active military service during the Great War.

I have recently spoken and corresponded with some family members on the Jablow side and there is a notion that Morris took the Chigorinsky name as a joke almost, albeit an inside one, as it reflected both the cigar industry and his ethnicity. It is possible though, that he was indeed a Shorin before immigrating as there was a well-known merchant family of that name in Russia for many years prior.

When I wrote the Wrapper article I was laboring under the impression that Morris had come to America with his wife, Rebecca (nee Jablow) and young Moe; I have to confess I am not 100% convinced of this anymore although there is some lingering uncertainty among the Jablow descendants on this point. Census records for the family give differing accounts of events over thirty years' time which does not help matters but it is clear to me now that Moe was not a child of Rebecca's and that Morris and she were married (in the U.S.) in 1896.

Morris Chigorinsky was most probably well off (in a relative sense for immigrants) when he arrived in the U.S. in 1891. He initially had a cigar business that employed some members of the Jablow family but I cannot determine if this was how he met Rebecca. Over the years though, various Jablow's and their offspring would figure in the operation of Topps. Thanks to Carol Jablow, I was also able to obtain a picture of Morris and Rebecca as I had not been able to find one anywhere until she came to my rescue. Here is Morris first:



That was taken from a larger still showing them both, probably in Miami in the late 30's or early 40's:



From 1897-1903 the four "Shorin" boys (Abraham, Philip, Isador and Joseph) were born and around this time, or maybe a little later, Morris was in business with a man named Louis Metz (also referred to as Melz), in a location at the bustling intersection of Throop and Flushing Avenues in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that would have been ideal for a retail shop. City directories that I have been able to access on a limited basis do not give a business name unfortunately, so I cannot determine if they operated under the American Leaf Tobacco Company monicker or not. The ALTC did have operations as far away as St. Louis by this time, I just can't tell if Morris was involved with any of them. Confusing matters further is the dissolution of ALTC as a New York Corporation in 1903, which doesn't necessarily mean much as Topps would later go into and out of a corporate ownership structure in the early days of World War 2 without affecting operations.

Morris may have struck off on his own around 1906 (not sure yet) but in 1908 ALTC capitalized in New York and Florida with operations in the Sunshine State centering around a prime tobacco growing area. The firm would grow rapidly, establishing Brooklyn headquartes on Debevoise St. in Williamsburg although there is some debate among the Jablow descendants as to the extent of trouble it experienced during the Great War. My own observation is that the firm did well despite the war as Morris Shorin purchased a fine home in a well off section of Crown Heights around 1918, after renting in various locations up and down Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant for many years. Ira and Joseph went on to college and I suspect the other two boys did as well; even the ill-fated Moe had attended New York University for a while.

The late 20's saw the family purchase American Gas Stations, as recounted here recently, an entity that was run by Joseph Shorin whereby he gained valuable insight into how to run a successful company. Topps just released an insert set entitled the History of Topps and the first card is, fittingly enough, of  Joe Joel Shoirn, his son nephew:



This is a good place to stop for today methinks. Much, much more to come on the Shorin and Jablow families and their involvement with Topps Chewing Gum, including the founding of the firm, shortly. In the meantime, if anyone out there has more details on these early days, please contact me. And thanks for the corrections folks!

The Secret Origins Of The American Leaf Tobacco Company

This post will be part shameless plug and part history lesson. I've been digging deep into the history of the Shorin family and the early days of Topps and their predecessor companies, American Leaf Tobacco Company and American Gas Stations, of late. I'll save my discourse about the latter, much more obscure gas station chain for another day in order to look at the tobacco firm, which I'll dub ALTC for short. First though, my plug for issue #257 of The Wrapper, wherein Les Davis granted me far too much space for a look at these same subjects in an article titled Before Bazooka.



I don't intend to trample on the Wrapper article just yet to allow Les a chance to sell the issue but do want to add some to the back story as I have found out quite a bit more about ALTC since submitting my piece. I'll also save the ancillary stories attaching to the other surprises revealed in the article for another day but suffice to say the early stories of Topps' founding have been greatly burnished.

The standard story goes like this (and does so on about 200 different sites and in dozens of articles):

"Topps itself was founded in 1938, but the company can trace its roots back to an earlier firm, American Leaf Tobacco. Founded in 1890 by Morris Shorin, the American Leaf Tobacco Co. imported tobacco to the United States and sold it to other tobacco companies. (American Leaf Tobacco should not be confused with the American Tobacco Company, which monopolized US-grown tobacco during this period.)

American Leaf Tobacco encountered difficulties as World War I cut off Turkish supplies of tobacco to the United States, and later as a result of the Great Depression. Shorin's sons, Abram, Ira, Philip, and Joseph, decided to focus on a new product but take advantage of the company's existing distribution channels. To do this, they relaunched the company as Topps, with the name meant to indicate that it would be "tops" in its field. The chosen field was the manufacture of chewing gum, selected after going into the produce business was considered and rejected."

Well, not really as each paragraph above is about half true. I suspect this official story was a creation of Topps' publicity department, created when stories about baseball cards started popping up in newspapers and magazines in the early days of the hobby and the company needed some kind of narrative to supply to the various writers who contacted them. For a couple of reasons, I believe this official narrative to date to the early 1960's but again, that's a tale for another time. Let's go back to the beginning then, shall we?

I have spent the last three months wading through all sorts of genealogy webs, news archives and Google Books sites in search of the primordial Shorin's and can tell you I have not found a single factual reference to the actual founding of the company relating to Morris Shorin. Oh, Morris was real enough and I am certain the ALTC was founded in 1890 but the first problem I encountered was that he immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1892, or two years after the founding date of the company and four years after some accounts indicated he made the Atlantic crossing.

The earliest reference I did find about the company was a commerce directory that showed an address at either No. 22 or 23 Central Wharf (the discrepancy is likely due to the Google OCR software) in Boston and listing a Mr. S. Salomon, late of New York, as proprietor. Further notations revealed the company was indeed founded in 1890 but by the same S. Salomon.

A little more digging yielded a major clue. In January of 1888 there was a spectacular failure of a tobacco importer in New York City called M&E Salomon. Among the 13 preferred creditors whose firms were affected was a Mr. Gustave Salomon. The more I looked, the more Salomon's I found and further digging found a story about the failure of a tobacco wholesaler, also of New York City, called Simon Salomon and Son, which was related to the M&E Salomon meltdown. Simon Salomon's son had the first name of Solomon and it seems probable his full name was Solomon Simon Salomon (wow!).

Maddeningly, I can't yet locate the Salomon family genealogy or reliable census records, primarily due to the 1890 U.S. Census archive being virtually destroyed by fire in 1921. I believe with about 95% certainty that Solomon S. Salomon is the same S. Salomon shown in Boston in 1892, that he is the the likely son of Simon Salomon and was the true founder of American Leaf Tobacco Company.

The Salomon's seem to have been major figures in the New York City tobacco business following the Civil War and their roots extend back even farther than that. I cannot fully determine what happened to send our young Mr. S. Salomon off to Boston following the M&E Salomon crash but he may have wanted to get away from the family mess in NYC for a bit. There is also some anecdotal evidence the family had relatives in Boston so more research is going the be required on that front.

Solomon Salomon was back in New York City by 1895 and 1897 is the first year I can find a citation showing the ALTC domiciled in Brooklyn, where they are listed in a City Directory as being on Throop Avenue, regrettably without a street number shown. I have to think Morris owned, or was at least heavily involved with the company by this time as Throop is exactly one block over from Tompkins Avenue, where the family (who were not called the Shorin's at the time--and no, they were not originally Salomon's) lived. Since all of the Salomon's tobacco business seems to have been conducted in Manhattan and not Brooklyn in the 1880's and 90's, I would estimate Morris could have acquired the ALTC or at least was running it by 1895 when Solomon Salomon was back in New York. There is also some evidence Morris Shorin did not have full control though until 1908; still digging there but the date may just refer to a major incorporation or reincorporation of the firm.

Morris, for reasons that will be explained another day, was not lacking for funds from what I have uncovered so his purchase of another company would not surprise me one bit, especially given the later patterns in business of the Shorin family. The deliberate blurring of the ALTC timeline also fits these patterns.

I was unable to find a picture of any buildings housing American Leaf Tobacco anywhere and considering the company eventually had a global presence, this is another quest I will maintain. I managed to unearth scans showing the Central Wharf well before it was destroyed to make room for a rebuilding project though. Two of the best are shown below.

The first is taken from a stereoscopic view that may predate 1892 but could show #22 or 23 (off to the left of the central cupola, probably within the framework of the two ship's masts in the foreground).

(From the collection of Robert N. Dennis)

Another view, from a 1906 print, shows a colorized Central Wharf but is skewed too far to the right to show the ALTC address (numbering is consecutive, each chimney represents a different address). I can't recall where I nicked this scan from but it's nice, no?

Pretty neat! Much more to come come on the early days as 2011 progresses.