“Arnie” was a situation comedy that ran on CBS from 1970 to 1972. Herschel Barnardi played the title character of Arnie Nuvo, who was a blue collar employee of the Continental Flange Company, but one day, was tabbed for a position in the executive suite. The television show was fictional, but it resembles many actual American dreams that were fulfilled: to start on the bottom rung and to climb to the top. Such was the story of two Chattanooga brothers, Joseph Carroll and James Albert Cobble.

The Cobble brothers were natives of Monroe County, Tennessee. The booming manufacturing economy of Chattanooga attracted the young men to the city in the mid-1910’s. Both worked in the textile industry. By 1930, Joseph was a foreman at the McAllester Hosiery Mill, which had plants at 1611-13 Williams Street and West 45th at Oakland in Alton Park. Albert was employed by the Mountain City Knitting Mills.

In 1936, Joseph and Albert Cobble decided to take their careers in a new direction, yet one based on their experience as users of textile machinery. They established the Cobble Brothers Machinery Company in a small building on East Main Street. To keep overhead low, they initially built table model sewing machines using the parts from discarded ones.

The Cobble enterprise grew, and moved to a larger site at 315 West Main Street, between Cowart and Broad streets, in 1939. The brothers specialized in tufting machines, which could rapidly insert threads into a base material and weave them into a pattern. History books of the textile industry credit the Cobbles with several patented inventions, and with giving rise to the bedspread and carpet industry in north Georgia.

Albert Cobble left the firm in 1940 to form his own business, Tennessee Textile Machines. By then, nephew Lewis Card had joined Cobble Brothers. He became shop manager in 1942, allowing Joseph Cobble to work on designing new machinery.

In 1955, the Cobble company relocated to larger facilities on Riverside Drive. The business employed around one hundred workers. Branches of Cobble were found at Dalton, Fort Oglethorpe, and in England. Tufting machinery was sold throughout the United States, as well as Europe, Australia, and Africa.

On June 29, 1960, the Chattanooga Times announced that the Singer Manufacturing Company would buy Cobble Brothers. Sale price was $6,000,000. Cobble was in the process of expanding their Riverside plant from 56,000 square feet to 73,000. Singer operated at the site until 1977.

If you have memories of Cobble Brothers Machinery Company or Singer-Cobble, please send me an e-mail at jolleyh@bellsouth.net.