By Ken Wyatt
War often brings cruel ironies. One such irony played out in the little village of Concord in the months after America declared war in December of 1941.
The irony? That a German engineer, who fled Hitler’s Third Reich, and who helped America defeat Hitler’s brutal European war, was reduced to collecting used bottle caps during the war. If that makes little sense, here’s the story:
It is related in a short chapter in Peter F. Hurst’s “I Came to STAY: The Journey That Led to the Founding of Aeroquip.” Published long after his 1969 death, the book is an account of Hurst’s early years in Germany, his role in developing an airplane brake system for an engineering firm, and his mission to America in an effort to develop business partnerships here. All of which led to the founding of Aeroquip.
As the book explains, in January of 1940 an executive with Hayes Industries invited Hurst to Jackson, Michigan, to meet with businessmen interested in partnering with Argus, the German firm Hurst represented. The result of that meeting at the Hayes Hotel was that 10 of those men each put up $1,000. With that $10,000, Hurst launched Aeroquip.
But the events that had prompted Hurst to leave Germany soon complicated his life in America.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, President Roosevelt addressed Congress, and war was declared. Germany then declared war on the United States. Hurst, as a German citizen, was ordered by our government to step aside from his leadership role at Aeroquip. He was regarded as an “enemy alien.”
That forced exit lasted 21 months before extensive FBI and military background investigations led to his restoration. And it was during those 21 months that misfortune led him to little Concord – just west of Jackson.
Here’s how he explained it in his book:
“I had heard about the difficulty the bottling companies had in obtaining bottle caps, as they were made of tin plate, which was rationed. The owner of the local Coca-Cola Bottling Co. was very much concerned about the situation, as his business would come to an abrupt end if they should run out of bottle caps.
“Other bottling companies were debating the possibility of collecting the old caps so they could perhaps be reworked and used again.”
It turned out to be an enterprise undertaken solely to provide some income, but one Hurst said he “detested.” Every week he would receive a truckload of old bottle caps and large tin cans. They came from area restaurants and hotels.
“It was a messy affair, as we occasionally found mice and even rats among the old tin cans,” he recalled.
The actual work involved cleaning the caps and cans in large vats with a caustic solution. Then the cans would be slit to create rectangular pieces of tin, from which new bottle caps would be punched out.
Not only was it a “messy affair,” the cost of the caps never got down to the cost of new caps. So, Hurst said, “the bottling companies did some business with us even though they had to pay a premium price for an inferior product, merely to have a source assured.” It all depended on the uncertainties of availability of tin plate during a period of rationing.
As he reflected back on that episode toward the end of his life, he wrote, “Under the circumstances I considered myself lucky to have found an activity, which gave me some income. I rationalized, just like the Emperor Vespasian in ancient Rome, who debated the taxes charged for the sewage disposal, and coined the words that became so famous, ‘Non Olet.’ (It does not stink. That is, the money.)”
During the war years, Peter and Betty Hurst had two children – sons Ronald and Anthony (“Tony”). Though Tony was born in 1944, he does remember the bottle cap episode from his father’s account. However, he never knew what building was used for that brief enterprise.
In any case, the entire project was abandoned after Friday, Sept. 17, 1943 – the day that the government authorized his return to Aeroquip.
Though that account was only a brief interlude in the book, there was substance to it. For Hurst, the bottle cap venture took place between December of 1941 and September of 1943. But war rationing did not end until surrender of Japan two years later.
The Office of Price Administration was the federal agency that oversaw rationing. According to Wikipedia’s article, “The work of issuing ration books and exchanging used stamps for certificates was handled by some 5,500 local ration boards of mostly volunteer workers selected by local officials.”
But it was a process for the OPA to issue orders on what products were restricted. The Associated Press first restricted the manufacture of bottle caps in April of 1942 – along with other restrictions on the production of new bicycles and florescent lights.
Soon after that, newspapers began reflecting the restrictions in local stories and ads. In the Jackson Citizen Patriot, there were ads from Schlitz and Schmidt’s beer companies about the bottle cap restrictions. Jackson High School sponsored a drive to collect all kinds of things from used bottle caps to coat hangers and tin cans.
Every family received ration books for restricted quantities of such things as gasoline, sugar, meat and butter.
The object, of course, was to redirect into the wartime effort the production and distribution of such products.
As for Peter Hurst, his return to Aeroquip put him in the front lines of an industry essential to our military’s war against Hitler’s Germany. Aeroquip served American’s war effort with two product lines: flexible hose lines with detachable, reusable fittings, and self-sealing couplings.
