As the Lugzsonian continues to wind down its acquisitions and reduce its collection to just the
keepiest of the keepers, we have found our attention turning more grande and studious. We have been thinking more holistically than nitnoid. About our start in this hobby (a 1943 Willys MB onboard toolkit), our expansion to other WWII era tools and sets, and our inevitable infatuation for Pre-War, Interwar, WWI, and even older tools, mainly civilian. About the totality and evolution of it all, from the Brass Era to the Postwar Boom, Hot Rod, and Muscle eras. And, even though we don’t have much interest in collecting them, to present day.
The history of American hand tool manufacturing is basically a century‑and-a-quarter long story of morphism and predation. Small fish being eaten by big fish, big fish being eaten by bigger fish, bigger fish conjoining, only to be eaten by even monstrously bigger fish. Curiously, though, with little to no bloodshed, the vanquished suffered only slow, time-delayed, ignoble deaths, living on as the names of brands and subsidiaries inside the bellies of large corporate portfolios, reduced to no more substance than the volume of ink on the packages, like newsprint on the sides of dead fish at the Fulton fish market.
All of this is well known. The names and dates of the many mergers, acquisitions, conglomerates and casualties can be found in company biographies right here on GJ brand threads, on sites such as Alloy Artifacts (AA), the ‘Progress is fine, but…’ blogspot, Wrenchwiki, etc, gleaned from Google Books periodicals, IA/ITCL catalogs, or, for the nerdiest researchers, the “Assignments” sections inside the USPTO Trademark Status and Document Retrieval database system - the best and most accurate source for the historiography of American made mechanics hand tools, which shows a record of all the “rights and goodwill” (including TM’s!) being passed from one business enterprise to another, transaction by transaction.
One thing very conspicuous by its absence, though, is a good summary. One simply cannot find a good visualization of it all, all at once, in one place.
Not even the so-called “Timeline” in AA (a vertical, tabular list of names and events in descending chronological order), a fairly good if incomplete reference, captures the totality of the trends in an easy, non-narrative, Facts-at-a-Glance view.
Which we found very frustrating.
If only for our own use, edification, and enjoyment, and in keeping with our motto...
...the Curator and the Publications Dept have taken a stab at it.
Presenting...
Mergers, Acquisitions, Conglomerations, and Casualties in the US Hand Tools Industry
We’ve been working on this project for more than a minute, not only gathering facts, but experimenting with form and style, to find the best complement, as our former infographics mentor, the inimitable Edward Tufte, would demand of us.
We couldn’t get it all on one chart. But we managed to get it all on only four (4) charts – covering The Apex Tool Group (Part I), StanleyBlack&Decker (Part II), the Snap-on and S-K stories (Part III), and lastly, the notable companies who managed to retain their independence and solvency for commendably good, long runs, some of them still in business (in Part IV), with a fifth chart showing all this corporate activity against a context of broader economic trends (Part V), preceded by a very high level Overview (Intro).
When finished, we found that the 50,000 foot 125-year-long view was more insightful than we had even imagined it might be.
Some notes on content before we post and the griping starts:
While we are certainly aware of much earlier merger actions (the formation of Peck, Stow, and Wilcox in 1870, for a prime example) and we love our Civil War and our very late 19th century horse-and-buggy and railroad tools, we focused on the advent of the automobile, the 20th century, and the classic era of hand tools manufacturing. Hence, also, our primary focus on companies making mechanics tools, as opposed to tools for woodworkers, machinists, leather, and other trades, wherein the absence of companies such as Disston, Millers Falls, Starrett, the venerable C.S. Osborne (perhaps the oldest US tool manufacturer still in business), and many others are deliberate not inadvertent omissions.
Also, it’s not meant to be exhaustive, but even if there was enough space to show all manufacturers, we have excluded some of our own favorites (e.g., Braunsdorf-Mueller) and those known mainly for certain types of tools, such as hammers (e.g., Heller, Vaughan & Bushnell, etc), screwdrivers (e.g., H.D. Smith, Reed & Prince, etc), locking plier-wrenches (e.g., Petersen), chisels (e.g., Mayhew, etc), and files (e.g., American Swiss, etc), unless they were an entity swallowed nominatively whole by another entity, in which case they are included in some way, shape, or form.
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Beta release, work in progress, etc. All constructive comments welcome. If you notice any glaring mistakes or anything seriously askew, please do tell us. This was a lot of data to organize and we wouldn’t be surprised if we have left a “holiday” - as the old man used to say, or two.)
