Autograph Signed Letter, October 8, 1896 failure to deliver basket order: “we never were so much disappointed and annoyed in any one thing as we have over these baskets”
Manuscripts
$75
Written on two sheets of Cleveland’s Arnold Wooden Ware Company letterhead, this 1890 correspondence to J. T. Bryant—then of Donaldson & Bryant and later proprietor of the Bryant Basket Company—laments his failure to fulfill basket orders. The shortfall left Arnold scrambling to pay other suppliers and cancel commitments. Signed only with a company stamp, the letter mixes frustration with wry humor: ‘We never were so much disappointed and annoyed in any one thing as we have over these baskets.’ Given that baskets topped the list of goods proudly advertised on Arnold’s letterhead, the final jab lands all the sharper: ‘Everyone who gave [them] orders was mad.'”
