Old Imperial Brochures

While researching items for a future exhibit, I found several brochures Imperial Sugar published for different audiences through its corporate history. They span several decades and reflect changes in the company and, implicitly, in the town. I'll post a couple of early ones now and several more in the future.

The first is a short pamphlet on how sugar is made. M. R. Wood was a real renaissance man and eminently qualified to talk authoritatively about sugar technology. (Wood was the chief engineer and chemist at Imperial in its very early days.) Click the image below to view the brochure.
 

Cover of M. R. Wood brochure on Sugar Refining, c. 1920

 

The next brochure was printed in 1925. Note that the author is C. B. Gillespie, who was managing editor of The Houston Chronicle at the time. (My brother found this interesting tidbit about him, which says he was a newspaperman, who worked for W. T. Eldridge in Sugar Land for a few years before returning to the newspaper business and becoming a senior figure at The Houston Chronicle. I guess he did some free-lance work for his old employer and friend.)

Take a quick look at the images because they give an distinct impression of Sugar Land in the mid 1920s, but the business reason behind the brochure is interesting, too. 

The biggest sugar refiner in the US in those days was American Sugar Company, which produced Domino Sugar. The New York-based behemoth was trying to poach Imperial's market in Texas.  Eldridge was defending his company's territory from what appear to be under-handed practices.  American was selling inferior sugar as 'pure cane' sugar -- at a much lower price than Imperial. They seemed intent on driving Imperial out of business - or that's what Eldridge thought. 

Imperial (Eldridge) filed an anti-trust suit against American Sugar and won after a court battle that lasted several years. Eldridge was a real bull dog.

 

C. B. Gillespie's brochure on Texas Pure Cane Sugar, 1925