Information Sheet

 

 

R         Goodhealth Shoe Company.

727                  Papers, 1921-1945.

                                    One folder.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are corporate records, mostly minutes of meetings of the Board of Directors and shareholders, of the Goodhealth Shoe Company of Carthage, Jasper County, Missouri.  Its purpose was to manufacture children’s footwear and, later, to lease its factory to other manufacturers.

 

On 14 November 1921 a preliminary meeting of shareholders was held in Carthage, Jasper County, Missouri, to organize the Goodhealth Shoe Company.  On 16 November “Articles of As­sociation” were adopted, and the firm was incorporated by the state of Missouri on 21 November.  Capitalization was $50,000 distributed in 500 shares of stock.  The first president was C. F. Reith, and the firm located in the former site of the Howard-Hulme-Dittrich Shoe Company.

 

The new firm contracted with the Juvenile Shoe Corporation of America to “take on the sales work” for a commission of 7¢ per pair for the first 200,000 pairs of shoes, and 5¢ per pair there­after.  However, before operations could get under way, President Reith on 19 January 1922 “urged that some steps be taken in an effort to correct labor conditions which prevailed in the community…,” whereupon the Board established a committee of three “to confer with other facto­ries with a view to developing a plan which will obviate the present competition in labor.”  By late summer that year the plant was still not in operation, although the Board was told on 13 Septem­ber that it would be up-and-running by 15 October.  “Mr. Market,” the factory superintendent for Juvenile, would also supervise Goodhealth’s operations, and the production of Juvenile’s “Boys and Little Gents” footwear would be shifted to Goodhealth’s facility.  By 18 July 1923 the entire building had been leased to Juvenile, followed by a near three-year gap in the corporate records.

 

In June 1926 Goodhealth leased its building for $150 per month to Smith Brothers, a manu­facturer of work clothing, and in January 1927 the firm’s shoe-making machinery was put into storage.  This arrangement lasted about five years, for in September 1931 the lease with Smith Brothers was terminated.  At this time, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Carthage Cham­ber of Commerce assumed the rental payments on Goodhealth’s building for a new tenant, the United Wood Heel Company.  Also at that time the Chamber of Commerce offered to buy the factory for $18,000 but the sale was not effected.

 

In July 1933 Goodhealth began paying occasional dividends to its shareholders, never less than $1 per share and never more than $2, until the dissolution of the company.  The Carthage Loan and Investment Company (see WHMC-Rolla collection R692), through W. E. Carter, be­came the single largest shareholder in the firm, owning 70 shares in 1934 and 124 shares when the company was dissolved eleven years later.  Another, minor, shareholder was R. Marlin Perkins of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo.  In October 1934 the factory was leased to the Carmo Shoe Manu­facturing Company, and this lease was renewed in March 1938.

 

A financial statement dated 31 December 1938 indicated that rental income from the factory building was essentially Goodhealth’s only commercial enterprise, but by 31 December 1941 the financial statement suggested that the edifice was vacant, because income for that calendar year had been “none.”  There was also no income in 1942, and only $370 for 1943, during which year the firm sustained a loss of almost $1500.

 

In February 1944 the factory was leased to Fred M. Sears’s Carthage Furniture Manufactur­ing Company, for only $75 per month, and the treasurer was authorized to execute notes for $1000 with the Bank of Carthage.  Rental income of $1085 in 1944 constituted the company’s profit for the year.  Finally, in February 1945, H. W. Putnam, Jr., offered to purchase the company’s real estate, essentially its only asset, for $12,000.  The Board recommended to the shareholders that they accept the offer, and, furthermore, that they vote to dissolve the corporation.  On 1 March 1945 the shareholders approved both propositions, and the firm was dissolved, paying a final divi­dend of $23.03 per share.  On 29 June 1945 “Articles of Liquidation” were filed with the Missouri Secretary of State, and the Goodhealth Shoe Company, which had produced few shoes in its nearly of 24 years of corporate life, ceased to exist.

 

Besides C. F. Reith, other presidents of the firm were Dr. R. W. Webster, F. C. Hodson, and O. E. Proctor, all of Carthage.

 

 

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