John Francis Kroutil (Yukon, OK)
John Francis Kroutil (May 24, 1875 – June 12, 1954)
Biography
- Name: John Francis Kroutil
- Birth: May 24, 1875 Bohemia (Austria-Hungary)
- Death: June 12, 1954 Piedmont, Oklahoma
John Francis Kroutil (1875-1954), long-time President of the Yukon National Bank, was a prominent Czech-American businessman and civic leader in Yukon, Oklahoma. Kroutil’s career is most associated with the history of the Yukon Mill and Grain Company, an enterprise that he and his siblings expanded into the largest independent milling operation in the southwest United States. At one time, “Yukon’s Best” flour and other milled products were sold throughout the United States and exported to Latin America and Europe.
Early Years
John Kroutil was born in 1875 near Prague, in what was then the region of Bohemia under the Austro-Hungarian empire. His family had been in the freighting business before their livelihood was disrupted in the wake of the Austro-Prussian War. In 1881 his parents Frank and Katerina Kroutil brought their family to the United States, settling first in a community of Czech migrants in Nebraska before moving to Oklahoma Territory during the 1889 land run. There, they settled on a farm near El Reno. For a number of years, the young John Kroutil hired himself out locally as a farm hand.
While still in Nebraska, John’s older sister Mary married Anton F. Dobry, a son from another Czech family that had immigrated a few years before the Kroutils. Dobry’s family soon followed the Kroutils to the same Czech community that was forming in the El Reno-Yukon area. Somewhat older than the Kroutils, Anton Dobry first established himself as a prosperous farmer in Yukon before entering into business partnerships with his two brothers-in-law. In 1896 and 1897 John and Frank Kroutil married sisters, Emma and Mary Borek respectively, daughters from a Czech family that also arrived in Oklahoma via Nebraska. John and Emma had one daughter, Bernice, before Emma died in 1900. Kroutil married again to Mary Fisher. They had two daughters, Margaret and Arline.
Origins of the Yukon Mill and Grain Company
John Kroutil and his older brother Frank first got into the grain dealing business in 1898 by purchasing a grain elevator in Ponca City. Known there generally as the “Kroutil Brothers”, the two operated the elevator as the Oklahoma Grain Co. until mid-June 1900, just after Emma Kroutil’s death, when they sold the company and moved to Yukon. There, the two brothers embarked upon the same business in a rather cutthroat and litigious environment, this time in partnership with Joseph Fyala, another brother-in-law by dint of his marriage to yet another sister from the Borek family, Bessie. Kroutil & Fyala’s largest grain facility was located in the town of Geary (and was managed by Fyala) although the partnership built and operated a number of other elevators in the area, including in Yukon itself.
In February 1902 John Kroutil married his second wife, Mary Fisher, who hailed from the same Czech-settled part of Nebraska where his family had once lived. Shortly afterwards in early April the Kroutil & Fyala partnership sold all their elevators to the Choctaw Mill and Elevator Co., save for their Yukon facility. Just a couple weeks later, John and Frank Kroutil used the proceeds from that sale as well as financing contributed by Anton Dobry, their other brother-in-law, to purchase a small milling operation, the Yukon Grain and Mill Co., from Charles Geisecke. John Kroutil became President of the company, Anton Dobry its Vice President, and Frank Kroutil its Secretary and Treasurer, an arrangement that lasted until 1933 when Dobry exited the company in order to start his own milling company, the Dobry Flour Mills (Frank Kroutil died shortly before that in 1932). Dobry’s parting of ways coincided with a deterioration in relations between the Dobry and Kroutil families that seems to have lasted until the 1950s.
Initially a small mill with a capacity to produce some 50 barrels of flour a day, Yukon Grain and Mill Co. company expanded rapidly, achieving a 50-fold increase in production by the early 1930s. As it grew into the preeminent independent milling company in the region, John Kroutil began to play a prominent role in the grain industry, serving as President of the Oklahoma Millers Association and a member of the Millers National Federation.
Other Businesses and Banking Interests
As Kroutil’s public stature grew, he became the subject of newspaper profiles and interviews in which he repeatedly attributed his business success to his single-minded focus on grain milling as his life-long ambition. There is no reason to doubt his commitment. Once the Yukon Grain and Mill Co. proved successful, Kroutil made few investments that were not somehow related to growing his core business. In December 1909 he and Dobry chartered the Yukon Electric Company to serve as a distribution and marketing entity for the electric power that Yukon Grain and Mil’s generating equipment produced for its own operations and, secondarily, to sell to other customers in Yukon. This power company remained in Kroutil and Dobry family hands until it was sold to Oklahoma Gas & Electric in 1959.
In May 1912, John Kroutil and Charles A. Arlen secured a charter for the Yukon National Bank (# 10196). The bank’s first board of directors consisted of John Kroutil (President), Frank Kroutil (Vice President), Charles A. Arlen (Cashier), Anton Dobry, R. A. Vose, and J. W. Maney. Shortly after its founding, Arlen was replaced as Cashier by J. Patrick Kelley, who then served in that position until 1918, after which Aaron Augustus Pitney replaced him. As with the power company, this bank was created primarily to support the Yukon Grain and Mill by meeting its payments and financing needs. The bank enabled Kroutil to expedite payments to farmers for their grain and finance their crop production, as well as to discount bills of lading for shipments of the Yukon mill’s flour products. As the bank’s first President, John Kroutil remained in that position for over forty years until his death in 1954.
After Prohibition ended, Kroutil originated yet another grain-related enterprise in the form of the Progress Brewing Company of Oklahoma City. Initially, Kroutil, Dobry, and F. E. Wanamaker of Oklahoma City secured the brewery’s charter in 1933, but by the time its production began quenching drinkers’ thirsts in early 1935 Gustave F. Streich, the owner of a zinc smelter from Quinton, Oklahoma, had become Kroutil’s main partner. This change in partners coincided with the emergence of bad blood between John Kroutil and Anton Dobry, brothers-in-law and longtime business partners. In 1933 Dobry had sold out his share in the Yukon Mill and set up his own, rival milling company in partnership with his sons and sons-in-law. Awkwardly, the Dobry Flour Mills Co. was located just across the street from the Yukon Mill! At this point, Dobry was at least seventy years old. While it can only be conjectured, starting afresh at this point in his life only made sense if Dobry had felt that his own children’s prospects and interests were not being satisfied by the Yukon Mill’s current owners and managers.
Not only had Dobry parted ways with Kroutil over the mill and the brewery, but a series of legal actions further strained relations between the families. In 1935 Dobry took Kroutil to court, alleging that Kroutil financed the brewery in part by using fraudulent electricity pricing to siphon off revenue from the Yukon Electric Co. Dobry, who was still a major shareholder in the power company, contended that Kroutil inflated the cost of electricity generated by the mill’s equipment which was then sold to Yukon Electric for distribution to its own customers. In this way, Dobry alleged, Kroutil contrived to reduce the power company’s profits and thus Dobry’s share of them (when Dobry’s mill began operating in 1935, it made sure to advertise that its power came from Oklahoma Gas & Electric and not from Yukon Electric). For his part, Kroutil brought an action against Dobry alleging that, in constructing his new facility, he had appropriated building materials from Yukon Mill properties. Whatever their legal resolution, these disputes did not go away. Some twenty years later, Anton Dobry’s oldest son, Theophile A. Dobry, having inherited the shares in the power company after an ugly family struggle over who would control their ailing father’s assets, sued the Kroutils again, alleging the existence of a similar scheme to manipulate electricity pricing.
Under Oklahoma law, Progress Brewing was limited to the production of three-two beer. Initially, Progress Brewing and the Ahrens Brewing Company of Tulsa were the only two producers licensed in the state. With the bankruptcy of Ahrens in 1940, Progress continued on as Oklahoma’s only brewery. It had a capacity to produce 100,000 bottles a day, or a bit more than 4000 cases (at 24 bottles a case). Taken together, the brewing, bottling, and distribution of Progress’s product promised some 1,000 jobs in Oklahoma City, a welcome prospect during the Depression years. In 1959 the company was acquired by the Lone Star Brewery.
Primarily a businessman rather than a banker, John Kroutil had few investments in, or affiliations with, financial institutions other than heading the Yukon National Bank. In March 1913 the YNB did acquire a small local bank, the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Yukon. Kroutil was also listed as a director for a time of another state institution, the Richland State Bank (this failed in 1923). In 1915, Kroutil became owner of the Yukon Sun Publishing Co., but seemed to take little direct role in the management of the town’s newspaper. Two years later, Kroutil along with two other investors incorporated the Bethlehem Zinc Co., a mining concern with operations in Kansas. He continued as a director of this concern in the 1920s. Finally, in 1931 Kroutil was listed as a director of the Oklahoma Southern Life Insurance Company.
Public Life
Beyond his business concerns and professional affiliations, John Kroutil played an active public role in local, state, and national affairs. He was an important figure in the early history of Yukon, serving as a long-time member of the city council, the school board, and the Yukon chamber of commerce. Politically, Kroutil was a conventional Democrat, although there is no indication that he ever sought to parlay his public stature into any run for elected office. He maintained cordial relations with organized labor, for example by cooperating with the unionization of his mill workers in 1916. He also earned labor’s plaudits for donating supplies of his flour to striking coal miners and for his contributions to the unemployed during the Depression years. By the late 1930s he even lent material support to Ira M. Finley’s more radical group, the Veterans of Industry of America.
While not exactly a flamboyant public figure, Kroutil conducted himself with a certain gregarious flair. He had a taste for fast cars. As an officer of the Southwest Auto Racing Association he served as one of the sponsors and judges for a 200-mile race in Oklahoma City in 1915 (the winning car, a French Peugeot, achieved an average speed of 67.8 mph). He was an avid driver himself, even gaining notice for equipping his family in the late 1930s with what was considered at the time to be the largest fleet of Nash Ambassador Coupe Eights in private hands. As a frequent business traveler, Kroutil was also an early adopter of, and enthusiast for, the airplane. As early as 1929, he bragged about how keeping a chartered aircraft at the ready enabled him to avoid travel by train and the associated need to stay overnight in hotels. Instead, flying allowed him to transact business in Kansas City and return home the same day. Kroutil was an important patron of the celebrity aviator, Wiley Post, serving as a go-to funder of Post’s exploits, particularly his solo trip around the world in 1933. In a more mundane way, Kroutil also supported Post by hiring him to fly Kroutil around to inspect the crop situation in neighboring states from the air.
The Presidential Campaign of 1932
Kroutil’s most prominent venture into politics took place in the early 1930s, when he became involved in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential effort, both as a speaker, financial contributor, and fundraiser on behalf of the campaign. Kroutil attended the 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as a member of the state’s delegation. There, he made waves by footing the bill for an ostentatiously large dinner for Democratic leaders. In August 1932 Kroutil was appointed state chairman of the Roosevelt-Garner Business and Professional League and made a national vice president of the organization. Roosevelt also hooked Kroutil up with Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago and a fellow Czech immigrant. Together, Kroutil and Cermak founded a second and rather niche campaign organization, the National Association of Roosevelt Czechoslovakian Clubs of America. Cermak was made its President and Kroutil one of its vice presidents.
All of this attention was undoubtedly flattering to the Yukon grain miller. As a candidate, Roosevelt cultivated Kroutil by inviting him to attend his speeches, seeking out his advice on farm issues, and even sending Kroutil condolences on the death of his brother Frank in September 1932. In return, Kroutil threw himself into campaigning and fundraising, making use of his favorite mode of transport, the airplane—this time piloted by another famous aviator, Bennett Griffin. Kroutil dubbed his air service the ”Roosevelt Air Special.” Thus did Kroutil barnstorm throughout the Southwest in late 1932 on his own speaking tours on behalf of Roosevelt.
This display of Kroutil’s energy and money on behalf of the national Democratic candidate did not sit well with the state party organization, which regarded Kroutil as something as a dilletante and a nuisance. Although state politicians (and particularly Governor “Alfalfa Bill” Murray) would only later become antagonistic towards FDR’s New Deal, in 1932 state democratic regulars resented the fact that Kroutil’s fundraising for the national campaign was diverting resources that might have gone to the state party. More concerning perhaps was the impending question of political patronage. With the Democrats poised to take over the White House and Congress, much jockeying went on over who would control the spoils of victory. State Democrats feared that Kroutil and his associates with the Roosevelt-Garner League would preempt the state party’s prerogatives.
For his part, Kroutil was less interested controlling appointments or building a political machine than in pursuing a single vanity ambition: becoming an American Minister to the fledgling country of Czechoslovakia. By late 1932, Kroutil’s aspiration became widely known. After hosting another large feast, this time a Washington, D. C. victory celebration for Roosevelt in December 1932, Harlow’s Weekly wryly noted that Kroutil “followed the dinner method of promoting the fortunes of his party and of himself.” By early 1933 it looked like Kroutil would get his wish. The entire Oklahoma congressional delegation had endorsed him for the job. At that point, state Democratic Party officials struck back by coming out against Kroutil’s appointment. That opposition, along with the State Department’s disinclination to appoint diplomats who were actually native-born to the country of their posting, led to the nod going instead to Francis White, a career foreign service officer. Stung by this rejection, Kroutil stepped back from the prominent role he had played in the 1932 campaign. Other than participating as a member of the Oklahoma delegation to the Democratic national convention in 1936, Kroutil henceforth avoided national politics.
Later Years and Death
Despite Kroutil’s disappointing campaign experience, by 1933 his achievements as a businessman, civic leader, and public figure merited his induction into the Oklahoma Memorial Association’s Hall of Fame. In particular, being the head of two concerns—the Yukon Mill, and Progress Brewing—that generated large payrolls assured Kroutil’s enduring affection in the eyes of the public. In the late 1930s Kroutil successfully fought off federal criminal tax evasion charges relating to the Yukon Mill with no effect upon his public reputation.
The last two decades of John Kroutil’s life played out relatively uneventfully, with no major new business initiatives or public commitments. He continued heading his mill, brewery, bank, and power company; remained active in his church (St. John Nepomuk Catholic Church of Yukon); and participated in the affairs of service organizations. Kroutil remained a lifelong supporter and benefactor of local schools. He also tended to the grandchildren produced by his three daughters.
The Kroutil brothers’ former partner Anton Dobry died in 1951 and the Dobry Flour Mills was sold three years later to the Oklahoma Farmers Union. The male offspring of Frank Kroutil (particularly Raymond Kroutil) assumed positions at the mill, the brewery, the bank, and the power company. John Kroutil died at his ranch near Piedmont in 1954 at the age of 79. In the ensuing years, Kroutil’s heirs divested themselves of most of the founder’s holdings. Both Progress Brewing and Yukon Electric were sold in 1959, while the Yukon Mill was acquired by the Shawnee Milling Company in 1970. Only the Yukon National Bank has remained in the hands of Kroutil family descendants.
Bank Officer Summary
During his banking career, John F. Kroutil was involved with the following bank(s):
- Yukon National Bank, Yukon, OK (Charter 10196): President 1912-1935
Sources
- Ancestry.com, Marriage records for John Kroutil, Frank Kroutil, and Joseph Fyala.
- The Automobile, April 15, 1915.
- Best’s Insurance News, September 1931.
- Bicha, Karel D. The Czechs in Oklahoma (University of Oklahoma Press 1980).
- The Corsicana (TX) Daily Star, May 4, 1932.
- Daily Law Journal (Oklahoma City), June 19, 1933
- Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), April 29, 1915; May 11, 1919; May 23, 1923; September 19, 1932; April 18, 1937; June 13, 1954; July 26, 1970.
- El Reno (OK) American, August 15, 1935.
- Evening Sun (Baltimore, MD), October 26, 1932.
- Harlow’s Weekly (Oklahoma City), August 27, 1932; November 19, 1932; November 26, 1932, December 10, 1932 (quote); January 28, 1933; April 1, 1933; December 16, 1933; December 11, 1937.
- Labor’s Voice (Oklahoma City), April 17, 1936.
- Manufacturer’s Record, September 6, 1917.
- Oklahoma Federationist, December 19, 1916.
- Oklahoma Weekly Leader (Guthrie, OK), December 9, 1909.
- The Ponca City (OK) Courier, March 21, 1898; April 19, 1900; June 1, 1900; June 13, 1900
- San Francisco Examiner, April 17, 1938; July 10, 1938.
- Thoburn, Joseph B. A Standard History of Oklahoma Vol V (Chicago and New York: American Historical Society 1916), pp. 1842-43.
- Tulsa Star, May 8, 1915.
- Yukon (OK) Sun, May 1, 1901; April 4, 1902; April 18, 1902; June 4, 1909; May 28, 1915; February 21, 1929; August 6, 1931; July 18, 1935; August 10, 1935; August 15, 1935; February 15, 1951; November 22, 1951; November 12, 1953; April 27, 1961.
- Findagrave.com: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/34497434/john-f-kroutil
- Banks & Bankers Historical Database (1782-1935), https://spmc.org/bank-note-history-project