M. Linkman & Co.

M. Linkman & Co. is the company that made pipes in Chicago from 1898 to the early 1950s and brought to market one of the most talked-about inventions of American mass production: the pipe broken in at the factory before sale. The company's own name is little remembered today; by contrast, the Dr. Grabow brand it launched in the 1930s has survived long after the founding firm passed into history.

A Pipe Factory in Chicago

Records indicate the company was founded by Louis B. Linkman, who worked for a Midwestern pipe wholesaler, together with August Fisher, with a few hundred dollars they had saved; it began as a small workshop employing only a handful of people. When Anton Burger, who came from the same trade, joined as a partner, the staff grew; the business incorporated in 1907 and Linkman took the role of president. Within fifteen years, production had outgrown workshop scale: a three-story reinforced-concrete factory building was put up in 1922. The lathes worked both briar and meerschaum.

What the "M" in the company name stood for is not certain. The common account holds that the letter refers to Linkman's mother, Mary Linkman; no such explanation appears in the firm's own promotional materials. One of the early-period brands carried the name Alco.

The Pre-Break-In Idea and Dr. Grabow

What set Linkman's brand apart from its rivals was not a pipe shape or a coating but a process applied before sale. The aim was to prevent the harsh taste that arises during the breaking-in of a new pipe from putting the buyer off. When shortcuts such as treating the chamber with a chemical failed to catch on, the company chose the route of smoking the pipe with real tobacco at the factory instead. The setup built in the early 1930s slowly puffed pipes fitted onto tubes using alternating vacuum and compressed air, with the process running until the chamber had been filled and emptied several times. Period advertisements refer to the tobacco used by the name Edgeworth.

The brand name was registered as a trademark in 1932, and the first pre-smoked pipes went on sale in 1933; the phrase "Pre-Smoked" became a fixture of the advertising from 1937 on. The mechanism drew enough attention to make newspaper copy, and it sped up the brand's nationwide recognition. As for the source of the name, the story told is that Linkman got permission from a doctor he knew in Chicago, Dr. Paul E. Grabow, to use his name; that permission is said not to have rested on a written agreement.

From Chicago to Sparta

During the Second World War years, most of the factory's output was set aside for the military, and shortages began on the civilian market; the cutoff of briar shipments from the Mediterranean pushed American manufacturers to look for domestic woods. Though capacity was raised after the war, the company could not sustain this arrangement for long. Linkman is reported to have stepped down from the presidency in 1952; the following year, the company's business and the Dr. Grabow brand passed to Henry Leonard & Thomas, a firm based in Greensboro. Production continued in Chicago for a while longer before the lathes were moved to the firm's plant in Sparta, North Carolina. The town had been home to pipe production since 1943; the source of the blocks worked there is discussed in the entry the briar used in Dr. Grabow pipes.

The brand passed to US Tobacco along with the Sparta plant in 1969, to Lane Limited in 1992, and changed hands once more in the 2000s. The Chicago era thus came to a close. The M. Linkman & Co. name withdrew from production; the pre-break-in idea it introduced, though, remained a marketing asset that was repeated for years in the American pipe market.