HARDWARE INDUSTRY IN AMER ICA. The term °hardware" like everything else in our country, has suffered a great deal of expansion during the past hundred years, particularly as regards its application. Origin ally restricted to necessary articles of steel and iron, it has come to embrace in its technical and business signification a great variety of goods which have no relation at all to the onginal meaning of the word.
One of the potent causes of this sweeping change has been the steady reduction in the price of hardware for a long series of years. This reduction has not been altogether continu ous, but with occasional uplifts during pros perous times or due to manipulation and con trol of the products — but on the average the trend has been steadily downward, particularly as compared with a period of 50 years ago. There Are innumerable articles whose present cost is only from one-third to one-half as much now as then.
Because of the discovery and exploitation of enormous ore bodies of iron, copper and lead, among which may be instanced the great mines of Lake Superior —both iron and copper — the copper deposits in Montana and Arizona, and the lead and zinc ores in Missouri and the Southwest, and also because of the steady mul tiplication and increased efficiency of machinery, it became possible to produce the finished prod uct at a steadily decreasing, cost.
Experience soon showed that the field of legitimate hardware was not itself sufficiently comprehensive to enable the jobber and the retailer to transact a large enough volume of business commensurate with the cost of doing this; therefore, kindred fields were invaded and occupied, and have now become practically in corporated as part of the hardware business. Thus it has been that the great number of arti cles which are known as house-furnishing goods, and embrace such lines as refrigerators, ice-cream freezers and innumerable other items which go to make up the objects needed in every household—and that the line of tinware and sheet-iron, and what also have come to be known as sporting goods — not only guns, rifles and pistols, but athletic supplies — have become part and parcel of the hardware busi ness in addition to the line of cutlery, and quite a number of other items in lines that were once entirely separate in themselves and had no rela tion to the hardware business. Thus the hard ware retail dealer has practically reverted to the original type, in the sense of going back to the plan of the old general store and keeping pretty much all that his customers need outside of such lines as drygoods, groceries and drugs.
Hardware is, to a large extent, naturally the business of a new country because of the great amount of building and the clearing of land, though it is equally true that in the modern civilized, progressive communities of this coun try the use of hardware is in equal proportion to the demand caused by new countries, and much more complex and complicated in its nature.
The history of hardware is naturally the history of this country, and it can be safely said that there is no other department of mercantile business that has so kept pace with the progress of the United States, nor which to-day depicts so thoroughly all the characteristics of modern American character in all its varied details. Beginning in the crudest way with the manu facture of hand-made implements and depend ing almost entirely upon importation from the Old World for what was needed—even in the way of necessities of life — it has grown by giant strides, more especially since the end of the Civil War, and in many instances largely because of the protection afforded by the tariff, until to-day American hardware is practically independent of the foreigner, save in those rare instances where we have not as yet learned the mysteries of ri manufacture or succeeded in pro curing sufficiently skilled workmen to answer the purpose. The manufacturers of hardware in America have been original in their ideas and methods and have adapted themselves abso lutely to the necessities of their environments, not slavishly following the copies of Old World tools, but being guided solely by common sense and necessity. It has followed thus, particu larly in edge tools, that there has been such advancement in the way of appropriateness to purposes intended and improvement in appear ance, finish and design as can be scarcely equalled in any other line of business. The artistic sense has not been lost sight of, but has been appealed to as well as the sense of utility. Cutting tools are made just heavy enough and to avoid the clumsiness of the Old World items in this regard. Originality has been shown in the incessant improvement of existing models and the devising of entirely new conceptions. The manufacturer has not been content to follow the custom of ages—has had little respect for tradition or inheritance, but has set himself solely to the task of producing an effective tool at the lowest possible cost.