{"product_id":"vintage-1950s-liberty-broom-label-paper-and-chemical-supply-co-sheffield-alabama-nos","title":"Vintage 1950s 🧹 Liberty Broom Label, Paper and Chemical Supply Co., Sheffield Alabama, NOS","description":"\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mnqkCUb7DIQ\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003ch2\u003e🗽 Why Is the Statue of Liberty Standing Guard Over a Broom From Sheffield, Alabama?\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 5 1\/2\" x 3 1\/2\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePlenty of brooms got a rooster, a pretty girl or a catchy name on the label. Somebody at a supply house in northwest Alabama looked at a plain household broom and decided it deserved Lady Liberty. I love that choice, and I love it even more for the people who stood behind it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a vintage \u003cstrong\u003eLIBERTY broom label, new old stock (NOS)\u003c\/strong\u003e, never used, made for the \u003cstrong\u003ePaper and Chemical Supply Co. of Sheffield, Alabama\u003c\/strong\u003e. It measures 5 1\/2 by 3 1\/2 inches (about 14 x 9 cm), a shade bigger than a 3x5 index card. The company named on it was founded in 1949, so that is the earliest it could have gone to press, and the 1950s suit it best. It is a hard one to find. The same Liberty drawing turns up blank in blue every so often, but this Sheffield imprint is one I have not seen offered anywhere else by itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🌍 Sam Israel: Eighteen Years Old and Headed for Sheffield\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe name in that panel belongs to a company, but a company is only people, so let me introduce the man who started it. Samuel Jacob Israel came from Ponadel, Lithuania, to Sheffield, Alabama, in 1909. He was eighteen. His first job was clerking in a grocery store, and he boarded in the home of a man named Phillip Olim. In 1912 he married Bessie Kreisman. That is a long way from home for a teenager, and he stayed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe grocery clerk did not stay a clerk. He opened a wholesale grocery business of his own and kept at it until 1952. In 1949, with the grocery still running, he and his son-in-law, Jack Muhlendorf, founded \u003cstrong\u003ePaper and Chemical Supply Co.\u003c\/strong\u003e in Sheffield. It was incorporated in January 1969 to deal in paper, plastics and chemical supplies, with Jack, Jack's wife Beatrice (Sam's daughter) and Sam himself as the incorporators. Sam stayed chairman of the board until he retired in 1984 at the age of 93. He died at home on November 21, 1990, at 99, and he is buried in Sheffield's Oakwood Cemetery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat he did besides run a business\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIf that were the whole story I would still want to tell it. It isn't:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHe was president of the Muscle Shoals Airport Authority and played an important role in gaining the support and the money to build the airport.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHe gave the land for the Northwest Alabama Rehabilitation Center in Muscle Shoals and led the fund-raising for it.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHe got Alabama Public Television to teach adults across the state to read.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHe was the first Citizen of the Year named by the chamber of commerce and WOWL-TV, and the Daughters of the American Revolution gave him their Americanism Medal.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHe served on boards from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army to the United Way of Colbert County, and he was president of B'nai Israel Temple in Florence.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn January 1991 Senator Howell Heflin put a tribute to him into the Congressional Record. Dick Biddle of WOWL-TV summed him up in a single line: \"People worked with Sam and not for him.\" That was exactly how Sam wanted it, and when he was laid to rest, employees of Paper and Chemical Supply were among his honorary bearers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe firm outlived him by a long stretch. By 2015 his grandson David Muhlendorf was running it, with about 35 employees, and that January American Paper \u0026amp; Twine of Nashville bought it. Sixty-six years after Sam and Jack opened up in Sheffield, it was still a going concern.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏭 The Town the Firm Grew Up In\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSheffield is a town that was built on big ideas, and the firm on this label grew up in the middle of them. A Montgomery businessman, Captain Alfred H. Moses, bought the land in 1883 with Colonel Walter Gordon and C. E. Gordon, and the town was incorporated on February 17, 1885. They named it for Sheffield, England. Blast furnaces were running by 1887, so when young Sam arrived in 1909 they had been at it for more than twenty years. They shut down in 1926.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThen the twentieth century came through in a hurry. In October 1917 President Wilson picked Sheffield for an ammonium-nitrate plant, and Wilson Dam was begun in 1918. In the 1930s the Tennessee Valley Authority took over the dam and the plants, and when the Second World War arrived an aluminum plant was built for Reynolds. So by 1949, when Paper and Chemical Supply opened, the Shoals was a valley with a federal dam, a federal power program and aluminum, and a wholesale grocer turned supply man was setting up shop right in the middle of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e📦 How a Stock Broom Label Got Somebody's Name on It\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA label like this was not drawn for one company. It is a stock design from a numbered series that a broom maker or supply house could order by number. The same Liberty drawing turns up in blue on blank labels printed \"15-LITHO IN U.S.A.,\" which makes it design No. 15. The series was sold through John L. Denning \u0026amp; Company of Wichita, Kansas, a broom-corn house begun in 1924 that ran 14 branches in different states. The trade story is that it sometimes owned 75 to 90 percent of all the broomcorn available.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA Denning sample booklet advertised forty designs, told buyers to \"Order by Number Only,\" and refused any order under 1,000 of a design. Its address carries an old postal zone number, the kind the Post Office used from 1943 until ZIP Codes arrived in 1963, so that catalogue belongs to the same stretch of years as this label. A Denning booklet and a loose copy of this very Sheffield label have turned up together in one collector's lot, which tells you the kind of world these labels lived in.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe panel at the foot was left empty on purpose. The same drawing exists blank, and it exists overprinted for other firms, including a maker in New Athens, Illinois. The buyer's own name went in at the print shop, struck in letterpress type after the picture was finished. That is how \"Manufactured for\" works on a label like this: a broom factory made the brooms, and the supply house had its own name put on them. The factory stays out of sight, and the name that goes out the door is Paper and Chemical Supply, Sheffield, Alabama.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e✏️ The Typo Nobody Fixed\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRead the first line of that imprint again. It says MANAFACTURED, with an \"a\" where the \"u\" belongs. Whoever set that line of type dropped the wrong letter in, and it stayed that way when the sheets were run. I know it came from the type and not from wear or a smear, because a second copy of this exact label carries the identical misspelling. I love a flaw like that. It is baked into the printing itself, it comes straight out of a print job from the middle of the last century, and it reminds you that every one of these labels was made by people.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🇺🇸 Lady Liberty on the Everyday Stuff\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePutting the Statue of Liberty on an ordinary product was about the quickest way a label maker had to say \"American.\" She was shorthand for homegrown and proud of it, and she turned up on goods of every kind. On a broom label she makes a plain household tool look like it came with a flag.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🖼️ Display Ideas\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🖼️ \u003cstrong\u003eSlim frame and a small card\u003c\/strong\u003e telling the Sam Israel story, so the label tells it to every visitor.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🧹 \u003cstrong\u003eMudroom, laundry room or pantry,\u003c\/strong\u003e hung near a real broom, where the joke needs no explaining.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🗺️ \u003cstrong\u003eA Shoals shelf\u003c\/strong\u003e with Sheffield, Florence and Muscle Shoals pieces, Wilson Dam and TVA material.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🗽 \u003cstrong\u003eA Lady Liberty wall\u003c\/strong\u003e with other patriotic ephemera.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e📒 \u003cstrong\u003eA junk journal or scrapbook page,\u003c\/strong\u003e where it sits happily at its size.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🎁 Who Collects These\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAlabama and Tennessee Valley history collectors want a piece that names Sheffield and carries a story this good. Broom-label and household-advertising collectors will know the stock-design game. Statue of Liberty fans get a patriotic classic on an unlikely product, and misprint hunters get a genuine typo set into the type. It also makes a fine gift for anyone with Shoals roots.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003chr\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e❓ FAQ\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat does \"Manufactured for\" mean?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA broom factory made the brooms and put the supply house's name on them. Here the supply house is Paper and Chemical Supply Co. of Sheffield, Alabama.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eIs the misspelling real?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes. The line reads \"Manafactured,\" and a second copy of the same label shows the identical error, so the type was set that way.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eWas it ever used?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo. It is new old stock, a label that never made it onto a broom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eHow old is it?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe company on it was founded in 1949, so it can't be earlier than that, and the 1950s fit it best.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eDid other firms use the same Liberty drawing?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYes. It is a stock design, and it turns up blank and with other firms' names printed into the panel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eIs Paper and Chemical Supply still around?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe firm was sold to American Paper \u0026amp; Twine of Nashville in January 2015, when it had about 35 employees.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67834459390184,"sku":"VAG-15360695599336","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.8622651130_ngjw.jpg?v=1791132421","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1950s-liberty-broom-label-paper-and-chemical-supply-co-sheffield-alabama-nos","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}