UNIFICATION AND COMMERCE

The 3^rd October is the Day of German Unity (German: Tag der Deutschen Einheit) and is the national day of Germany, celebrated as a public holiday. It commemorates the anniversary of German reunification in 1990.

In keeping with things German there are a couple of other matters arising on this day, On 3^rd October 1835, J.S. Staedtler received permission from the municipal council to produce black-lead, red chalk and pastel pencils in his industrial plant. In 1866, the company had 54 employees and produced 15,000 gross (2,160,000 pencils) per year.

Long before Johann Sebastian founded his own pencil manufacturing plant on 3rd October 1835, one of his ancestors, Friedrich Staedtler, had already been active in the pencil-making trade with records of him in Nuremberg's city annals dating as far back as 1662.

Staedtler Mars GmbH & Co. KG is a German fine writing instruments company and one of the world's leading manufacturers and suppliers of writing, artist, and engineering drawing instruments. Over 80% of the production is taking place in the headquarters in Nuremberg, though some of its products are made in Japan. Its "Noris" line of pencils is extremely common in British schools.

On the 3^rd October 1872 Bloomingdale brothers opened their first store at 938 Third Avenue, New York City. Bloomingdale's started in 1861 when brothers Joseph and Lyman G. Bloomingdale started selling hoop-skirts in their Ladies Notions' Shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The pair were sons of Benjamin Bloomingdale, a Bavarian-born salesman who had lived in North Carolina and Kansas, and settled in New York City.

As the popularity of the hoop skirt was declining, the brothers closed their East Side Bazaar in 1872 in a small row house on Third Avenue and 56th Street, selling a variety of garments such as ladies' skirts, corsets, "gent's furnishings", and European fashions. At the time the East Side was a working-class neighbourhood with shantytowns, garbage dumps, and stockyards. Most of their customers and competitors were in the Upper West Side, and at that time most 'respectable stores' only specialized in one trade. There are now 48 stores located in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Dubai.

Jesse B. Blayton Sr.

Unrelated to Germany, but still commercially significant, Radio station WERD, was established in Atlanta, Georgia on the 3^rd October, 1949. WERD Atlanta was the first radio station owned and operated by African-Americans. Jesse B. Blayton Sr., an accountant bank president, and Atlanta University professor purchased WERD in 1949 for $50,000. He changed the station format to "black appeal" and hired his son Jesse Jr. as station manager. "Jockey" Jack Gibson was hired and by 1951 was the most popular DJ in Atlanta. The station was housed in the Masonic building on Auburn Avenue, then one of the wealthiest black neighbourhoods in the United States. Located in that same building was the headquarters of the new Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It has been said that King would beat the roof of the office with a broomstick as a signal to send the microphone down when he wanted to make public addresses.

Jesse Blayton was born in Fallis, Oklahoma, on December 6, 1879. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1922 and then moved to Atlanta, Georgia to establish a private practice as an accountant. Blayton passed the Georgia accounting examination in 1928, becoming the state's first black Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and only the fourth African American nationwide to hold the certification.