Product Details
Nicely engraved antique stock certificate from the Hydro-United Tire Corporation dating back to the 1920's. This document, which has been signed by the company President and Treasurer, measures approximately 12" (w) by 8 1/2" (h).
This certificate's vignette features an eagle atop a shield and some arrows.
Images
Historical Context
The Hydro-United Tire Company was born out of the National Rubber Company, and their Pottstown, Pennsylvania production facility.
The company produced a line of car tires marketed under the Hydro-Toron, Hydro-Insured and Hydro-Balloon names.
The company went into receivership in 1922, but emerged in 1927, along with a new subsidiary, the Dickinson Cord Tire Company. JG Feist served as the newly-reorganized company's President, while Frederick S. Dickinson headed the subsidiary.
In July 1928, Feist charged Dickinson had “paid himself sums of money to which he was not entitled.” Feist’s tire enterprise finally collapsed in 1929 when creditors seized the company’s main assets, the tire and natural rubber inventory. The contents of the factory, down to desks and typewriters were seized and sold off to satisfy debts, then came the flood of lawsuits. The Pottstown newspapers that once hailed Feist for his civic philanthropy now noted that ‘The Maples’ was “barnlike cold” in the winter and where “champagne and lavish liquors used to flow, Feist was lucky to have a bottle of gin.” JG Feist died of a heart attack in 1934, but all the lawsuits dragged on until September 3, 1947, when the last six tracts of Feist’s vast property holdings sold at auction for $10,000 to partially satisfy his estates’ outstanding debt to Society Trust of Pottstown.
