Read Chapter 4

When Ohashi began work on his typewriter devices, prices in the carbon paper and ribbon industry (most companies making or selling one also made or sold the other) had changed little over the years. A ribbon cost seventy-five cents to one dollar, and a box of carbon paper was $3 to $4. The Great War changed all that. Allied with Great Britain, Japan declared war on Germany much earlier than did President Woodrow Wilson. Even before America’s entry into the conflict, the supply of dyes and pigments from Germany’s chemical plants and certain grades of paper from England were affected. America aided the British and French before declaring war in April 1917, and many Americans had expected an end to American nominal neutrality. War was in the air.

In January 1917, fifty members of the Ribbon and Carbon Association met at New York’s Hotel Astor to discuss their overriding concern, the outlook for a wartime rise in costs.¹ After the United States joined the Allies and the Yank doughboys “over there” began to fight, government demand for products and general effects of mobilization changed the supply and demand for a vast range of goods.

Mobilization drew large numbers of workers from private industry and peacetime employment. The typewriter-related industry was not immune to this, even though much of its work (ribbon making, for example) was not labor intensive. Some estimated that by 1918, prices had increased 435% for imported cloth, 450% for black “record” ribbon (for standard office use), and 318% for imported lightweight paper, compared to pre-war prices.² Some impact was direct, such as government demand for typewriters, which led to industry fear that armistice would result in dumping of government machines on the market. Indirect impact was felt through changes in the availability of raw materials. Typewriter ribbon makers such as Ohashi were confronted by a shortage of fabric, because in 1918 the government was buying the fabric in bulk, uncut, for observation balloons, gas masks, aircraft, and other uses.³ Direct intervention limited the color of ribbons that could be made. The carbon paper and ribbon industry considered forming a War Service Committee, as the typewriter makers—who established the American Ammunition Company to make parts for shells—had done in August 1918 at the behest of the United States Chamber of Commerce, coordinated with the government’s War Industries Board.

These conditions notwithstanding, wartime prosperity arrived, and no doubt had a favorable impact on Ohashi’s business. His business was successful. It was not, however, among the largest typewriter ribbon and carbon paper businesses, nor was it a prominent advertiser in trade magazines. The larger companies typically had several branches in major cities. In his comment for the “Third Report of the Class of 1903,” issued by Harvard alumni, Ohashi wrote that he sold direct to consumers. He had no branch offices. Sales were large enough, nevertheless, that in contrast to Ohashi’s impecunious youth of lecturing at women’s clubs, he now was a member of clubs that marked the successful businessman: the Harvard Club, the Nippon Club, the Japan Society in New York, and the highly reputed Englewood Country Club (no longer in existence) in New Jersey. Further, he purchased seaside land in Florida.

However, the wartime boon was not to last. On November 22, 1918, the armistice ended the war. The extra demand created by the war effort was replaced in part by American efforts at improving productivity of office work, but demand for typewriters slumped, and with that went part of the ongoing interest in mechanical innovations for the machines. One typewriter maker’s government order for 10,000 was cancelled. In Syracuse, sadness must have tempered the elation over peace.

Ohashi did not live long enough to see his company prosper for many years. On a sales trip (one source says he was on the way to Florida for a vacation⁴) he fell ill. He died in Columbus, Ohio, on September 30, 1918. He was but 41 years old. The cause of death was said to be pneumonia, but it could have been what is called the Spanish flu. The influenza pandemic was worldwide; in New York alone it took the lives of at least 20,000 persons.

The timing of his death was particularly unfortunate for the company, which was still advertising in trade publications in 1919 while administration of the estate was before the court. In January 1918, the trade press announced that the company, in existence since 1905 under Ohashi’s ownership, had been newly incorporated in Delaware, with Ohashi himself the major stockholder. The name of the new company was the original name with the addition of “Incorporated.” Ohashi applied for a license to operate in New York, planning to solicit investment to begin to manufacture and sell a new product, as boldly declared in an advertisement in the trade press (see below).⁵ The reformed company was capitalized at $750,000 and Ohashi sought to sell $300,000 worth of treasury shares (par, $1). The product may have been his Inking Attachment for Typewriters.⁶ Or perhaps it was a device that improved on the attachment, for “Renovating or testing ink ribbons while fitted in the machine using ink ribbons.”⁷

In soliciting investment, Ohashi grandly wrote in his advertisement that it “will revolutionize the existing conditions of typewriter ribbons and the construction of typewriters. It will practically control the typewriter ribbon business of the world. It must eventually become a vital part of every typewriter, multigraph and similar machines… It is the most important development in the typewriting world since the advent of the visible machine.” The ad also welcomed hands-on investors, as the company sought to attract “a few men of proven executive ability, capable of managing manufacturing and distribution.” Ohashi’s death at age 41 probably put an end to this ambitious plan.

The last important encounters between Ohashi and Americans were with women. Though unusual for a Japanese man to marry an American woman, Ohashi did so twice.⁸ In January 1905 he married Mabel Doris McGary of Baltimore. She gave birth to their son in 1907, named Allan Kyso after Ohashi’s Harvard friend. Mabel became the child’s guardian after the couple were legally separated in 1912. Ohashi remarried in 1917 in Englewood, New Jersey, to Marie Voight of Charleston, South Carolina. She was his private secretary at the company for thirteen months before Ohashi died, and was traveling with him when he died. Ohashi had died intestate; in the absence of a will the law required two-thirds of the estate to go to Allan Kyso, the immediate heir, and the remaining third to go to Ohashi’s widow, Marie, who was “administratrix” and at the time resided in Manhattan.⁹ Marie petitioned the Surrogate Court in Manhattan for authorization to settle the estate, whereupon a team composed of Mabel Doris and William B. Garner, an employee of the company who took over as interim general manager, promptly mounted an offense.

What followed was a battle wherein the legal air of the courtroom was filled with affadavits as so many swallows returning to Capistrano. Hearings were suspended time and again for the next round of appeal motions or rebuttals and accompanying affidavits. Both sides changed lawyers during this period, which lasted more than 18 months. In any event, the value of the shares was probably low, given that company now lacked its original owner. Almost all of the company’s 300,000 shares of common stock were held by Ohashi. Opposing Marie’s desire to sell the company, the Mabel must have expected a higher price in the future.

The immediate point of contention was whether Marie was free to liquidate the estate at that time. The Mabel Doris team insisted that this was not in the best interests of the young heir. The company was a going concern, bolstered by a growing industry and product demand, even without wartime boom conditions. It was making more than $120,000 a year, with production facilities and decent assets. When Ohashi died, he had $7,518 in the bank along with credits and liabilities tied to the company. Liquidating the company would mean selling the shares. The value of the stock, however, could only be determined by that sale. However, the main asset of the company was its founder and president, and in his absence, selling the shares would bring in less than if Ohashi was still alive. Ohashi had hired Garner in 1917 at $18 a week, but during the court hearings, his pay was raised about $45, to $60. His motives for collaborating with Mabel Doris are unknown.

Mabel Doris and the general manager of the company tried in several ways to prevent Marie from promptly exercising her inheritance rights, and at one point sought for Marie to renounce her right as administrator. They repeatedly asserted that Marie was interfering in company business. Marie’s financial situation was now in play, and she may have been in a dire situation, although she was to receive about $5,000 in cash as part of the estate settlement. An affidavit early in the proceedings mentioned that she was obliged to seek employment as a secretary to the Pius X Chair of Liturgical Music at Manhattan’s College of the Sacred Heart in order to cover living expenses.¹⁰ She had moved from her and her husband’s classy home at 53 Hamilton Terrace nearby 522 West 136th Street.

At one point, Marie agreed to sell her share of the estate, but this never happened and the courtroom confrontation dragged on until 1921. In 1920, the court made its final decision on the petition and appeal rights that might ordinarily accrue to the widow Ohashi, Mabel contested them in a late appeal on behalf of her son.¹¹ She was now general guardian of the boy.

Now Mabel Doris Isaacsen after a second marriage, she told the Surrogate Court judge overseeing disposition of Ohashi’s estate that a few days before Ohashi’s remarriage, the couple had made an agreement that despite the legality of the union, either of the two could consider it null and void.¹² The text of the agreement was printed in the New York Times report on this fight over the e
state and harks to the philosophic nature of the deceased businessman. It was a last-minute attack, an attempt to invalidate Marie’s position.

This unusual development had no effect, and the court’s final decision was to grant the request of the administratrix, as it was the responsibility of the estate administrator to turn all assets into cash, without which it was not possible to settle the estate. The decision on November 12, 1920 thus affirmed the earlier order that the company be sold at public auction, and dismissed an appeal made on October 13.

 To be continued.

 

Notes

1. “Ribbon and Carbon Men Convene,” Bookseller and Stationer, February 1917, 33.
2. Office Appliances, September 1918, 32.
3. Office Appliances, July 1918, 10.
4. His grandson said he had purchased seaside land there (personal communication).
5. “The World Does Not Stand Still,” Typewriter Topics 38, no. 2 (February 1918): 123. 
6. Ohashi, US Patent 1,300,999, filed December 8, 1916, and issued April 15, 1919.
7. Ohashi, US Patent 1,393,637, filed September 21, 1917, and issued October 11, 1921.
8. Others who did so included government official and author Inazô Nitobe in 1891 and biochemist and industrialist Jôkichi Takamine in 1887.
9. The press mentions a will, but there is no such mention in the record of court proceedings.
10. “Widow Obliged to Work Despite $400,000 Legacy.” New York Tribune, June 10, 1920, 13.
11. “Says Second Wife’s Marriage Was Sham,” New York Times, December 8, 1920, 12.
12. “Marriage of Convenience Of Rich Japanese Upheld.” New York Tribune, January 29, 1921, 15.

 

© 2025 Aaron Cohen