The dominant factor in the cutlery industry in the 20s was the Remington Arms Company. Remington, before the days of their acquisition by DuPont, made guns and ammunition. After the First World War, they frantically sought product lines to use the excess facilities created during the War. Thanks to a man of German descent, Tillmans, Remington entered the pocket knife business.
Tillmans was imported from Solingen, Germany, by Adolph Kastor to run a factory at Camillus, New York. He, in turn, brought over workmen from Solingen and soon Camillus was like Yorkville in New York - a German speaking community. You can imagine the shock and surprise of the Sherwood and Bingham families, to see their original English speaking force dominated by the Germans. Tillmans started a man's chorus, known in German as a Mennicore. They traveled around New York State and sang German songs. One of their stops was Utica, New York, home of Utica Brewery which was owned by the Francis X. Matt family who came from solid German stock. Old man Matt liked the singing so much, he convinced Tillmans to stay in Utica with the promise he would build him a cutlery factory, which he did. This was the background and origin of Utica Cutlery. Tillmans soon tired of Utica and when he heard from a former Utica salesman, A. H. Willy, that Remington Arms Company wanted to build a cutlery factory, he applied for the job and Remington was soon in the knife business.
I might add that at one time Tillmans did a similar thing for the American branch of the German company, H. Boker & Co. So in terms of 1974, Mr. Tillmans was responsible for three of the now seven pocket knife manufacturers.
Remington, Winchester, Landers, Frary & Clark (Universal) dominated the American pocket knife business. Any wholesaler who didn't handle one of these three, plus a Henckel and Wostenholm, just wasn't in the business. Most others in the business lived off their scraps. This was the time when I hit the road with the Kastor's import line plus the Camillus line.
Let's go back before my advent on the road in 1923, to a little more history. The oldest factory in America was Russell's Green River Works, makers of the famous Russell Barlow, which sold for .05. Matching Russell, there was a Wostenholm Barlow that sold for .05 too.
The second oldest was Holly Manufacturing in Lakeville, Connecticut. Then, down the Pike came Dwight Devine in Ellenville, and the New York Knife Company in Walden. Walden and Ellenville, at one time, were the centers of pocket knife manufacture in America. Col. Dwight Devine originally made brass tips for cow horns (they put brass tips on the horns of cows to that they wouldn't gore one another) and a few Sheffield patentees were brought over to make knives. Blades couldn't be properly heat treated unless the water came from Sheffield for the knife industry.
Underneath the drop hammers that forged the blades, hardened horse manure was placed because that gave just the right bounce to the drops, and believe it or not, for years horse manure was hardened in cutlery factories for that purpose. Knives were ground on dry stone wheels, and only the Lord knows haw many knife grinders died of silica poisoning.
Hands were hired not by the factory, but by the foreman of each department, who ruled with an iron hand. And the skills necessary to become a cutler, a hafter, a sharpener or any of the other trades, took years to learn with very little reward. When times were bad, wages were cut and the very large users like Shapleigh connived and cut the selling prices by offering large contracts at law prices when the factories needed work, and the wage earner received less. It's hard to believe, but I recall Louis Schrade saying in an open meeting in 1933 that he would go broke if he had to pay women .20 an hour, and men .25 an hour in wages.
Dwight Devine was known for making beautiful pen knives. New York Knife Company was better known for making 3-blade premium stock and cattle knives. In 1911, both received the franchise to make and sell the "Official" Boy Scout Knife, which was a very lucrative business because everyone, no matter what lines they handled, had to buy Boy Scout Knives. Of course, the great Remington got a franchise too, much to the disgust of the Devines. But, without the Official Boy Scout Knife, I could not have survived when I purchased Ulster, for the Government specification of a knife that was used on all Life rafts was the "Official" Boy Scout Knife and Ulster still had the franchise when I bought the company.
Remington Arms Company had all its contacts in the hardware and sporting goods trade which dominated the distribution of cutlery. If you didn't sell the leading hardware jobbers, there was no one to buy your wares. If you sold Hibbard in Chicago, you couldn't sell Sears because Hibbard sold Sears. This was true in Minneapolis where the leading mail order company was Savage Arms, or in other cities where large retailers started to take some of the business from the jobbers.
The hardware jobbers that controlled the industry, grew with the railroads and they actually established retail stores wherever there was a railroad stop, by extending credit and teaching someone in the local community how to run a hardware store. Thus they had their own built-in distribution and customers, thanks to their salesman who chose the location and filled the "want book" (into which the store owner entered the items that were out of stock) at his discretion, rather than asking the hardware store owner what he wanted.
The jobbers were so greedy that they "bought" themselves out of business. They never let manufacturers make money. Therefore, when Sears, Woolworth, Kresge, and Montgomery Ward allowed the manufacturer to make a profit, in fact insisted that they make a profit, manufacturers circumvented the jobber and soon they no longer had the majority of the business.
Remington did what was called missionary work i.e. go to the stores with the jobber, or alone, and sell the store and fill the order through the wholesaler. Cutlery was an off-season product of ammunition and guns. They printed a monthly magazine called The Lion's Share (meaning the I ion's share of the profits). They gave sales meetings for jobbers and salesmen. Had beautiful displays and spent more money trying to promote the sale of knives than the profits would allow. Tillmans, the factory manager, made knives "like the old days" instead of modernizing production methods. It was this lack of modernization and attitude of all cutlery makers that allowed Mike and Felix Mirando to get into business.
All factories sold what was known as "stabbers." They were 2-blade jack knives with bolsters at one end only, bare heads, that all sold at a loss. In the 1920s they were sold $1.50 to $1.65 a dozen, whereas the knives with the cap and bolster sold at $3.00 and up. Imperial started their business by making stabbers at $1.50 and it wasn't long before the owners of Remington, Winchester, and Landers gave up the ghost and sold out their business.
The beautiful Remington catalog pages, the promotional efforts including missionary work, the pressures (no cutlery - no guns), made it more than a little difficult to peddle my wares in Texas and Oklahoma, in New Mexico and Utah, in Walla Walla, Washington, and Los Angeles where the names of Kastor or Camillus Cutlery was completely unknown. This challenge taught me how to sell and I learned how to create some plus, in order to stay on the road and complete a trip (make it pay). Since then I have lived by the motto - make every trip pay for itself. I was brought up to do it by circumstances.
Among the dominant hardware jobbers in the USA were H. S. & Bartlett - their trademark "OVB" - "Our Very Best is the very best" and referred to by their competitors "Our Victims Bite" - Marshall Wells, branches in Duluth, Portland Oregon, and many cities including Canada, created Zenith Brand - and Simmons Hardware Company, with the famous Keen Kutter brand. Keen Kutter was owned by the Simmons family, and through a promoter who later ruined the Fox Film Company, opened a chain of Winchester Simmons Hardware and Sporting Goods stores. The planning for this effort was done by a group of college boys with no business experience. Wallace Simmons, a Harvard man, believed that Harvard could do no wrong.
They sold sporting goods including socks and gloves and large wrenches, and
of course cutlery. When they stocked their nearly 1000 stores, they sent a dozen of each size sock as well as wrenches, as well as other products, to their stores. Of course, after two days, all the popular sizes were out of stock but the store couldn't order because they had so many of the unpopular sizes left. In the case of wrenches, great big 12" wrenches would sell at the rate of perhaps one per year, and 1000 stores had a 12 year stock. Not even the bankers could bail out Wallace Simmons and this was the end of the famous Winchester Simmons Keen Kutter.
Keen Kutter was later sold to Shapleigh Hardware in St. Louis, and after the Second World War, I made the Keen Kutter brand in Camillus. Imperial was one of the first companies to manufacture pocket knives without forging the blades.
I was told one afternoon that two German boys were going to arrive, and my job was to put them on the sleeper on Car 96 to Auburn, New York. This was the train that left nightly and would stop at Camillus about 6:00 o'clock in the morning. It made all intermediate stops - Albany, Utica, Rome, Syracuse and then chug-chug from Syracuse to Camillus and take some workmen there for the morning shift.
Mr. Hauptman and Mr. Volkner could speak not a word of English and my German was about as bad as their English . But I brought them to 19th Street for dinner. I walked them up the Veisa Veck (White Way to you) and my explanation to the porter about putting them off at Camillus was clear and distinct. Volkner and Hauptman really needed an education of how to undress, how to go to the toilet and what to do in an American sleeping car. So in sign language I had them primed and left them at 11:00 o'clock. Hauptman and Volkner never got over the treatment they received. It was a great lesson to me not only in communication but what a little kindness meant.
