Under United States Rubber: the subsidiary years

1922 – 1961

The sale: In 1922 the Mishawaka company became a subsidiary of the United States Rubber Company — the abstract of the company's own records at the IU South Bend Archives states the year, and the carriers agree. The terms of the acquisition — price and share structure — were not reached and are named as a gap, with Glenn D. Babcock's History of United States Rubber Company (1966) and the parent's annual reports as the settling sources. In 1923 the local company's name changed to the Mishawaka Rubber and Woolen Manufacturing Company, in the library's summary — the name the plant carried for the rest of its independent existence, lettered on the boxes of Red Ball Jets a generation later.

The multi-product plant: Under the parent the Mishawaka works broadened from a footwear plant into the diversified rubber factory the marker and Bock describe — and their datings of the diversification differ, printed side by side as they stand, never averaged. Bock, writing in 1937: in 1933 the company developed the improved auto mat and became, in his statement, the largest single source of automobile mats in the world; raincoats were first manufactured in 1933 — the only raincoat production in United States Rubber, on his account; Mishawaka Cushions, a cellular rubber product, was introduced in 1935; canvas sport shoes had entered the line in 1922. The marker's panels date the same diversification differently: coated fabrics were introduced in 1934, the first product a leatherette, with raincoats also made; Koylon foam dates from 1937; the auto-mat business started in 1939, employing nearly two hundred workers and supplying Studebaker, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. The two accounts are the company's own history and the monument the company town raised afterward; the seven-year spread between Bock's 1933 auto mat and the marker's 1939 auto-mat business stands in the record as printed.

The parent's name: The United States Rubber Company renamed itself Uniroyal, Inc. in 1961. The local name's course is given two ways: the archives abstract phrases 1961 loosely as the year the plant was "sold to the Uniroyal Corporation," and the library's summary dates the local name change "to Uniroyal, Inc." to 1967. The sequence that both support is the one printed: subsidiary of United States Rubber from 1922; the parent's Uniroyal name from 1961; the Mishawaka plant working under the Uniroyal name by the later 1960s, in the library's dating. The plant outlasted every name it worked under — a fact the closing entries make plain.

Sources:

1. IU South Bend Archives, finding-aid abstract of the company's records — subsidiary of the United States Rubber Company in 1922, and the parent's course to Uniroyal and then Michelin.
2. Mishawaka-Penn Public Library summary (after Goldstein, 1980) — the 1923 name change to Mishawaka Rubber and Woolen Manufacturing Company, and the local name changed "to Uniroyal, Inc. in 1967."
3. Milton Bock, South Bend Tribune, 1937 — the improved auto mat and the largest-single-source claim of 1933, raincoats first manufactured in 1933 as the parent's only raincoat production, Mishawaka Cushions in 1935, and canvas sport shoes in 1922.
4. Ball-Band Factory marker — coated fabrics introduced 1934, Koylon foam from 1937, and the auto-mat business from 1939 with nearly 200 workers supplying Studebaker, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler.