Hardware store

“ We believed—in fact, we still believe, that the hardware store of the town should also be the leading garage of the town, and that the garage is the natural development of the tin shop. Many hardware stores are selling gasoline, and, as you know, automobile accessories are becoming quite common in a hardware store.
"If we had a garage adjacent to our hardware store," he continued, "we could not only supply a man with accessories, but attach them to his car. If a man has a breakdown, we are in a position to repair his car, and then exercise our selling ability to sell him accessories. ”

“ It was a fact; we were selling quite a lot of electrical goods—indeed, I believed we were going to build up a very substantial business in them before long. I was thinking of making a special department of them, and [Pg 216] hiring a girl to be in charge of it. I knew that many people would think it funny to have a girl in a hardware store, but, just the same, I had a hunch that a girl could handle that kind of goods better than a man. ”

“ The New England Hardware Company open their Farmdale Store January 1, at 62 Macey Street. This store will be in charge of Mr. Roger Burns, who for many years was in charge of the kitchen goods department at the Bon Marche. ”

“ A man in my position can't afford to lose his temper. I'll tell you now my proposition. Mr. Sirle of Hardware [Pg 86] Times told me you were a coming man in the business and suggested I show you this line."
"Well," I replied hesitatingly, "it seems to me that a pencil sharpener is not just the thing for a hardware man to sell."
"Mr. Black," he responded, "I am not going to try to persuade you what a hardware store should or should not sell ”

“ This [75] is because there is no way of handling small parcels of hardware without a cost that is so excessive as to force shipments of hardware to be made in bulk. With a one-cent-per-pound rate, more than fifty per cent. of the stocks now carried could be eliminated and orders sent by the hardware merchant directly to the manufacturer to be shipped by package. One hundred and ten pounds would cover the greater portion of the trade, and leave only nails, barbed wire, and similar articles, for bulk handling. ”

“ Hardware is the staple of their shops, but the cross-pole in front is fantastically hung with silken garters and tasselled cords, and their own Georgian caps, with a gay crown of cashmere, enrich and diversify the shelves. ”

“ The contractor shall furnish the manufacturer or dealer furnishing the hardware with details of woodwork or information that may be necessary in order to understand the requirements and to harmonize the hardware with the cabinetwork, and, where interferences are discovered, to have them adjusted before the hardware is delivered. ”

“ The Baxter Hardware Company was no longer an insignificant concern dealing in tools, tinware, nails; it was an “establishment.” You could buy plows there; reapers, binders and mowers; furnaces and boilers, ice boxes and washing-machines; pots, kettles and cauldrons; stoves, ranges and brass-headed tacks; cutlery, crockery and stout hemp rope; step-ladders, wheel-barrows and glass door-knobs; log-chains, dog-chains and fly-wheel belts; coffee-mills, pepper-pots and bathroom scales ”

“ The Hardware Manufacturers' Organization for War Service was formed to give just such assistance, cooperating up to 100 per cent of the hardware industry. The consolidation of the experience figures in American hardware consumption resulted in a schedule of supplies known as the Army's hardware tariff, a schedule showing the proportions in which hardware might be expected to be consumed. ”

“ Underneath the selling space in these large stores lies the network of machinery, all necessary for the prompt and careful adjustment of each day's work, furnishing the power for heating, lighting, elevator service, etc. Modern automatic sprinkler system always ready for an emergency, rendering the property and merchandise as nearly fireproof as possible, aided by a corps of properly-drilled firemen taken from the regular employees staff. Pneumatic cash system connecting with every part of the store selling space ”

“ The hardware manufacturers consulted their records and on the basis of actual consumption in American industry discovered that a repair unit consisting of a machine shop, a horseshoeing shop, a blacksmith shop, and a woodworking shop, with 11 mechanics working in the unit, would consume 305 dozen files per year, the experience tables showing precisely the proportions of the various sizes of files in this consumption. ”

“ The effect of competition in cheapening articles of manufacture sometimes operates in rendering them less durable. When such articles are conveyed to a distance for consumption, if they are broken, it often happens, from the price of labour being higher where they are used than where they were made, that it is more expensive to mend the old article, than to purchase a new. Such is usually the case, in great cities, with some of the commoner locks, with hinges, and with a variety of articles of hardware. ”

“ In the manufacture of the tools special appliances are used and will be referred to presently. The workmen are encouraged to use only tools in sound condition. Each machine-man in the shops has ten checks, and may borrow from the store a corresponding number of tools, but these must be returned as soon as possible for overhaul and re-grinding. The bonus system further induces the men to ensure that their tools are in good condition.
The tool department is separate from the main structure, and in it all jigs, templates, and gauges, as well as tools, are constructed. ”

“ One cannot help but think of the machine. Machines are hard. Generally they are fabricated in that hardest of all metals—steel. Can steel be warmed and tempered? Can the fact be recognized that the units of the Macy store are human and warm; and not steel and cold?
I think so. I imagine that you would have the answer to all these questions if you could talk for a little time with Jimmie Woods, whom we saw, but a short time hence, as a push-cart horse for the early Macy's and who has come today to be the assistant superintendent of the store's delivery department. ”

“ The three big factory groups which have grown from the shabby little buildings of 1848 are the fruit of intelligence and ceaseless endeavor, but they are reared primarily on a basis of manufacturing honor, and ruled by the general thesis that forever and ever quality comes before price. This means keeping faith with the structural iron worker, swinging pigmy-small five hundred feet above the din of the city streets; with the sailor, the miner, the rigger; with the hurrying multitude that packs the elevators in tall buildings, and with the aviator, to whom a breaking wire may spell death. ”

“ Hardware Schedules.—The contractor for the hardware usually takes off his own bill of material from the general drawings and the specifications furnished by the architect. However, the architect will sometimes supply the hardware schedule and obtain prices for the same direct from the dealer, thus saving the owner the general contractor’s profit and insuring bids based on material of uniform character and quality. ”

“ And now we’re talking about heterogeneous hardware being manufactured at the bleeding edge of nowhere, changing chips on the real estate to accommodate whatever the market is making cheap this month, and all the rest. ”

“ Perhaps no class of property in a manufacturing plant is so frequently lost as small tools. When no storage place is provided, workmen are liable to leave tools where they were last used. They are soon scattered about the shops and, because they are not readily found, new tools are purchased.
A special tool room is usually necessary, though in some cases the tools can be stored and cared for in the material storeroom. In plants manufacturing machine tools for their own use, the foreman of the tool department can care for the small tools in connection with his regular work. ”

“ The local hardware man is responsible for all cash. We get him to receive all the money collected, render us a weekly report, and send us a check for the full amount, with a list of any goods wanted for either the garage or the accessories department. ”

“ While the warehouse without bricks or mortar is not yet a fact, research discloses many manufacturers who have already cut their standing inventories, from small amounts to as much as 50 per cent, while maintaining customer service levels. ”

“ As the business grows other machines of greater capacity may be added to the plant. In due course of time the manufacturer could have a double scoring machine, and perhaps an automatic wrapping machine, installed, but it would not be advisable for the box-maker to invest money in such machines unless he controlled enough business to keep them constantly busy. It would be a mistake for the manufacturer to buy an automatic wrapping machine, or other extraordinary equipment, when he is not sure of having sufficient work to provide for such equipment. ”

“ One department of a factory that is either a source of expense or a factor in saving money, according to the way it is conducted, is the tool room. The tool storeroom is referred to here, rather than the department maintained by large manufacturing enterprises for the manufacture of machine tools.
Every manufacturer is obliged to maintain a complete stock of tools of sufficient size to meet the requirements of his establishment. Unless these tools are properly cared for, the investment is very liable to creep up to a point entirely out of proportion to the requirements. ”

“ The adoption of standard tools, appliances, and methods throughout the shop, the planning done in the planning room and the detailed instructions sent them from this department, added to the direct help received from the four executive bosses, permit the use of comparatively cheap men even on complicated work. Of the men in the machine shop of the Bethlehem Steel Company engaged in running the roughing machines, and who were working under the bonus system when the writer left them, about 95 per cent. were handy men trained up from laborers. ”

“ When a force of operators start work at a table, or at a group of machines, there should be a steady flow of material to keep them constantly employed. This is the system now being followed in the leading box-making factories, and it is a system which should be adopted by every box manufacturer, no matter how small his shop may be. Keep your skilled help plentifully supplied with material. Do not allow your best operators to waste time in carrying stock from place to place when boys or girls, with the aid of light trucks, can do this class of work just as well. ”

“ The economy to be gained through the adoption of uniform standards is hardly realized at all by the managers of this country. No better illustration of this fact is needed than that of the present condition of the cutting tools used throughout the machine shops of the United States. Hardly a shop can be found in which tools made from a dozen different qualities of steel are not used side by side, in many cases with little or no means of telling one make from another; and in addition, the shape of the cutting edge of the tool is in most cases left to the fancy of each individual workman. ”

“ I have stood in a great sugar refinery and watched the workmen from time to time draw off tiny phials of the sweetish fluid in order that they might show under laboratory examination that the machine was functioning at its highest point. And so are the tiny phials of Macy service drawn from the machine. If they show that, even in the slightest degree, the great machine of retail merchandising is functioning below its highest efficiency, it becomes the immediate business of the management to correct the loss. ”

“ The center shelving will always have stock boxes piled on top and that will throw one side of the store always in shadow. Besides, this arrangement divides the trade and screens half of it from view.
“The stock is cut in two and looks small.
“One salesman can not wait on the furnishing goods trade without neglecting half of it all the time. If you have two clerks, a customer must be taken from one side to the other for his ties or underwear, and there you are again, both on one side at the same time. ”

“ The work stands without a rival. It is a complete practical treatise on the art of American Tool Making and system of interchangeable manufacturing as carried on to-day in the United States. In it are described and illustrated all of the different types and classes of small tools, fixtures, devices, and special appliances which are in general use in all machine manufacturing and metal working establishments where economy, capacity, and interchangeability in the production of machined metal parts are imperative. ”

“ The industries that use machines were forced out of the homes and into the factories. There was no alternative. The steam driven machines produced goods so cheaply that the hand power, or home machine could not earn its owner a livelihood. Thus the factory system developed, partly because of the mechanical necessity of concentration where the power from one engine could by the use of shafts and belts be made to run a great number of machines, and partly because of the natural tendency of the man with the most money to acquire possession of the factory and have others work for him. ”