Laughter and the Industrialist

Laughter provided by Theodore R. Ernst. The industrialist was H.M Quackenbush. The Great Depression was underway after the recent stock market crash of 1929. A good laugh was probably welcome.

The author of this letter and publisher of the Laughter books was the impetus for this blog post when I acquired the letter, but he quickly fizzled out in research as someone of importance or general interest for the theme of this blog. The industrialist who ordered 50 books had the more interesting claim, with much information available on his life, though any ties to the book trades appear limited to being a buyer of books. But let's start with him.

Henry Marcus Quackenbush (1847–1933) was an American inventor and industrialist who founded the H.M. Quackenbush Company in Herkimer, New York, in 1871. This letter addressed to Mr. Quackenbush in 1929 confirms he was still running his company, or at least had a hand in it, nearly 60 years after he founded it.

He appears to have gotten his business training at Remington Arms, which he parlayed into a number of inventions of recreational and useful items for the company he started in 1871. They included mass-produced air guns with spring/air designs that became popular fixtures in amusement parks and carnival shooting galleries, a spring jointed nutcracker; and other items such as early ammunition for air rifles or BB guns, velocipedes (bicycles), scroll saws, darts, and metal garment hangers.

One invention that got away was the extension ladder, which he invented at age 16, patented, and then sold the patent for $500! A highly innovative and accomplished individual who lived a long life enjoying the fruits of his labor. 

Theodore R. Ernst, the author of this letter and book Mr. Quackenbush ordered, enjoyed only a short run of success as the compiler of Laughter: Gems of the World's Best Humor, a popular anthology published annually in the late 1920s to early 1930s. While this sounds like the start of something bigger, Ernst virtually disappears in the 1930s with just a scant few records of modest dwelling and an early death at age 52 in 1947. Before the Great Depression, he appears to have been building a career as a broker in the insurance industry. And perhaps as a budding publisher. 

No doubt, the severe economic downturn dealt his ambitions a blow, though he may have considered himself fortunate to ride out the tough times in a clerical position according to census records. 

But he left something of significance behind that is worthy of note. His collection of humorous stories, jokes, and witticisms from around the world offers today a window into early 20th-century humor. Ernst self-published small print runs, but original copies from the mid 1920s through the early 1930s still show up today on second-hand and antiquarian book marketplaces. His work lives on. In more recent times, Ernst has also been cited in DePaul Law Review, for pieces he curated, to study early 20th-century social attitudes, slang, and common fraud tropes of the era. 

And so a legacy of some merit begins to emerge from the dashed ambitions amidst the struggles of his era. A letter to a customer in 1929 at the beginning of a dark time survived and now shines a little light on his life and the humor he sought from around the world to make people laugh. 


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