Memo to E. H. Jeffords on Asbestos Bags for Dust Collection (1935)

A one-page letter of May 1, 1935, to E. H. Jeffords at Raybestos-Manhattan's North Charleston plant, "re: Asbestos Bags for Dust Collection," from a sales office identified only by the initials "FCW:TR." The writer weighed making seamless bags instead of the company's interlocked seamed bags: the St. Joseph Lead Company doubted the strength of a seamed bag and the New Jersey Zinc Company required seamless ones. He proposed a tensile strength test across the seams and noted that, with the upswing in non-ferrous metal smelting and "the widespread agitation for dust prevention in industry," sales opportunities for bags were greater than in the last three years.

What it shows

Besides making dusty asbestos products, Raybestos-Manhattan sold asbestos cloth bags for industrial dust collectors. The letter shows the company's salesmen seeing the growing concern over industrial dust as a market, and planning a circular letter to some thirty prospects in the smelting industries.

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's attorneys indexed the Sumner Simpson Papers. Their index describes this document as follows:

Discusses the advantages of seamless bags vs interlocking seamed bags. Many customers prefer or require the seamless bags because they are perceived as being stronger. Suggests the RM conduct strength tests across the seams of the bags currently in use. States that RM should keep in mind the possibility of using seamless bags.

About this copy

This is document 02478 of the Sumner Simpson Papers, as numbered in the collection's index.