Type Book: Complete showing of faces and sizes of type - September 1, 1949
Dallas: Jaggars - Chiles - Stovall, Inc., 1949. First edition. Quarto, 28.5x21.5cm, [4], 260pp. Printed in blue and black throughout. Green, faux leather, cloth boards with red embossed decoration and lettering on front cover and spine. Very good with rubbing to edges of boards, spine ends softened, and spine lettering faded. Exactly three characters have been neatly excised from pgs 249-251, a left facing, solid stubby arrow 24 pt. foundry ornament; 24pt, monotype bold face parenthesis; and monotype ornate brackets, 72pt-1167. Otherwise, clean and complete internally. Specimen book from one of the more prominent typographic companies in Dallas, perhaps most famous for their brief employment of Lee Harvey Oswald.
The company started in 1925 as Jaggars Typesetting Company, adding the Chiles and Stovall names five years later. While mainly producing plates and mats for advertising agencies and newspapers along with finely printed catalogs and ephemeral materials for the Dallas Public and Bridwell libraries, Jaggars occasionally were commissioned to do classified mapping work for the Department of Defense. This is where the conspiracy theories involving Oswald come into play.
Oswald worked for Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall from October 1962 - April 1963, hired through the State Employment Commission as a trainee to learn company's photoprint process. Due to a lack of progress and production, Oswald was terminated in just a few short months. Some interesting insights into the investigation of the company after the assassination of J.F.K. can be gleaned from bits of the testimony of president Robert L. Stovall from March 30th, 1964:
"Mr. Jenner (assistant counsel of the President's Commission): We are investigating as you notice in those papers all the possible pertinent facts and circumstances surrounding that horrible event, to... get rid of a lot of rumors that keep cropping up here and there....
Mr. Jenner: Was any of this [classified] work done in the department or area to which Lee Oswald had access while he was employed by your company?
Mr. Stovall: Not in the department at all. Whatever secret work we might have been performing, we do it with the persons who had been cleared by the regular procedures and they are the only eyes who view this.
Mr. Jenner: And were there any incidents that came to your attention with respect to Oswald's relations with other employees?
Mr. Stovall: Not that I personally know of--on occasion one or two fellows would mention that they didn't have any real liking for him because he was such an oddball...
Mr. Jenner: What was this man's skill to the extent that you recall, in these areas in which you sought to train him?
Mr. Stovall: He had no skill. He had no training whatsoever. You see, we employed him only as a trainee... but within 6 months, if they have shown no aptitude, we give up on them and have a parting of the ways.
Mr. Stovall: He sought employment at another company here in town, a printing company.
Mr. Jenner: Do you recall the name of that company?
Mr. Stovall: Padgett Printing Co...
Mr. Stovall: Yes--he's [Ted Gangel] their superintendent. He called me and asked... they said this fellow was kind of an oddball, and he was kinda peculiar sometimes and that he had had some knowledge of the Russian language... so I told Ted, I said, 'Ted, I don't know, this guy may be a damn Communist. I can't tell you. If I was you, I wouldn't hire him.'"
Type specimen books from JCS are extremely scarce. OCLC shows editions from 1938, 1949, and [1958?], all of which are held only by single institutions. An interesting item both in terms of the history of Texas printing as well as in relation to the assassination. Item #5034
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