I wrote about Julius Schnell, the Bankers Pen Company, and the Master Pen some three years ago. One thing not addressed in that post is the extent to which Bankers did any actual manufacturing. At last weekend's Chicago pen show, an old friend showed me a boxed Master Pen, which he kindly allowed me to photograph. The box top is clearly imprinted "MASTER PEN", yet on the inside it bears the name of Salz Brothers!
Salz, it would seem, was the company that actually produced the Master Pen for Bankers, and in all probability, the Banker coin-filler as well. As previously noted, Julius Schnell testified in 1914-15 that he had supplied the hard rubber parts for coin-fillers to both Bankers and Salz from around 1911. This suggests that while Salz may have been more of a manufacturer than Bankers, it too relied heavily on subcontracting.
