Samuel J. Murray

Samuel J. Murray (March 7, 1851 – August 23, 1915) was a New York printer's apprentice of humble origin, who rose to become an inventor who revolutionized the printing business, and one of the most successful businessmen of his time. At the time of his death at age sixty-five, Murray was vice president and treasurer of the United States Playing Card Company, and a director of the W. B. Oglesby Paper Company of Middletown, Ohio. His block of stock in the United States Playing Card Company was said to be worth $1,000,000.

Called "a mechanical genius, the marvel and admiration of the technical and inventive world," Murray made his mark on the United States Playing Card Company by creating and installing manufacturing equipment, such as an automatic punch machine which "increased the output of cards fourfold" and reduced labor costs by sixty-six percent. With the automatic punch machine, great sheets of paper were fed into the machine and came out as complete packs of playing cards, printed in four colors.

Samuel J. Murray was born in New York City on March 7, 1851. His father died when he was 12 years old. To help support his mother, two younger sisters, Catherine and Elizabeth, and younger brother, William, Murray found a job after school as a newsie delivering newspapers. His mother died when he was thirteen, leaving him to raise his younger siblings on his own.

He was hired as a printer's devil by Victor Eugene Mojet, who was so impressed with the young Murray, that he paid for him to go to England to learn the playing card printing business at the Goodall plant in London.

After his attempt to start a small playing card plant in Montreal, Canada was thwarted by a money panic, Murray was recruited in 1881 by Colonel Robert J. Morgan of the Russell & Morgan Company, to assist in the manufacture of playing cards at their plant in Cincinnati. Here, Murray thrived and with him, the fortunes of Russell & Morgan.

"The advent of Mr. Murray marked the advancement of the concern to the first rank as a playing card manufacturing establishment. He not only made the plant highly efficient, but when he found that any device was needed he evolved it himself and astounded his company by his ability to meet any emergency no matter how difficult."

Murray had a falling out with Russell & Morgan and in 1886 went off on his own to form the National Playing Card Company in Indianapolis – a move that Russell & Morgan came to regret. According to one source, as a competitor, Murray "was a serious menace to the Russell & Morgan Company and as a matter of self preservation, the latter bought him out, consolidating the Indianapolis concern with the United States Playing Card Company."

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