April 1947 and 1954
In April 1947 the Tucker Corporation of Chicago ousted its chairman, Walter G. Tucker, and replaced him with Dayton patent attorney Harry A. Toulmin, Jr. (1891-1865), setting up a battle royal between a most colorful Wittenberger and none other than Preston Tucker, the famous independent automobile manufacturer. Seven Aprils later, Harry Toulmin was back in the news, jousting with Admiral Husband Kimmel over the Peal Harbor disaster.
Who was Harry Toulmin, and how did he get himself into such messes?
Born in 1891, Harry was the son of area patent attorney Harry A. Toulmin, Sr., and at 15 he helped his father write the airplane patents for Orville and Wilbur Wright. After Wittenberg and the University Virginia, young Harry served in the army, earning a distinguished service medal during World War I. Trained as an attorney, he practiced in both Washington and Dayton. Appointed to the Army Pearl Harbor Board just after the attack in December 1941he became the principal author of that board's famous report. When Pearl's pre-war commander, Admiral Kimmel, published his memoir in 1954, Toulmin publicly claimed that Kimmel cannot escape the guilt for American losses at Pearl Harbor. Kimmel, according to Toulmin, was either incredibly stupid or grossly negligent.
Harry was as much a businessman and inventor as an attorney. By 1956 he owned or controlled 18 companies and had obtained several hundred patents. He wrote numerous books on antitrust laws, patents, and inventions, including Patents and the Public Interest and A Treatise on the Law of Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics. And for a short time he chaired the Tucker Corporation, made famous in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and His Dream. Named chairman of the corporation in early 1947, Toulmin resigned only months later, calling Preston Tucker, the car's inventor and the company’s president, an inexperienced boy. The new Tucker automobile, he said just, goes chug-chug and has no reverse. Toulmin also complained about the company’s organization, its planning, and its inadequate cost controls. Preston Tucker predicted they would make 1,000 of his new cars within a year, but Toulmin -- saying "I have never been a party to a failure and I don’t propose to be one" -- doubted the car had a future. As it turned out, only 51 were built. Tucker’s company was ruined by an 1949 SEC indictment for fraud and the resulting trial. The SEC case against Tucker and his codefendants was so bad that Tucker's lawyers did not even offer a defense, and the jury still acquitted them. But the company already was bankrupt.
Sources: New York Times, April and September, 1947, April 1954, February 1956; Springfield Daily News, March 1965; the Henry Ford Museum website entry for the 1948 Tucker.
Heather Griffith and T. T. Taylor
About The Project
With Wittenberg now celebrating its 175th year, and the University unable to hold regular in-person classes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor of History Thomas T. Taylor has started circulating several pieces on Wittenberg's history. Some originated in earlier series, either This Month in Wittenberg History or Happy Birthday Wittenberg. Others have their origin in the Wittenberg History Project or in some other, miscellaneous project. Sincerest thanks to Professor Taylor for connecting alumni, faculty, staff, and students through a historic lens.