St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1896-01-19
HARDWARE FIFTY YEARS AGO.

forced.
| HARDWARE FIFTY YEARS AGO.
No note of growth or progress, wheth-
er for man or nation, can be made when
eyes are fl xed steadily on the future
and the mind is engrossed with the
work of the present, projecting into
the days and years to come. 1t is only
| by taking now and then a pause, and,
! looking backward, measuring the dis
| lance traversed, noting the conditions
made different and better, that one
can tell how fast and how far the for
ward movement has gone. By com
mon consent this IS the season of re-
view; and if we gain nothing else from
spending a few moments on the back
ward glance, we add to our stock Of
self-complacency and racial pride. One
of the features reviewed in the New
Years issue of The Iron Age is the
hardware trade in the early days Of the
1 century, and it's ally, the transporta-
ton of goods in oul internal commerce.
|
! panied by several fac-simiIes of bills
of lading, written in the old days be-
! fore railways had shortened distances
and when the internal commerce OF
the country depended for transport on
water ways and dirt roads
| 1t is difficult now to imagine that
in 1928 Cincinnati merchants received
their wares from New England by way
of vessel to New Orleans, and thence
up the river by the slow-going steam
boats of those days; but bill of lad
ing for eight boxes Of hardware,
shipped by Elihu Hobart of Abingdon,
Mass, per the good brig Pharos, of
which John Proctor was master, to the
care of a New Orleans firm to forward
to the house in Cincinnati, attests the
fact of the roundabout way goods
went to market in those early days. It
is worth noting that the freight to New
Orleans was twenty cents a box, with
5 per cent primage and average ac-
customed," and that the master of
the brig had affirmed to four bills of
lading of this tenor and date, one of
! which being accomplished, the others
to stand void The blanks were writ
| ten in with a quill pen, for it was not
until 1910 that the steel pen began to
force it's way in over the heads Of re-
| luctant schoolmasters, one of whose
prime qualifications was ability to
change a gray goose quill into a fine
pointed pen, and every accountant had
| to have the same dizziness.
In 1910 the Cincinnati merchant car
ried a stock of rifles, mostly fiint-locks,
with an assortment of Bowie knives
and Derringer's duelling pistols; but
knives and pistols and guns went into
the current of humanity that swept
| from the states overland to California
a few years later, and with them these
! implements Of honor and death went
out of date. The long list of articles
| of hardware that have disappeared
from the markets and use in the half
century is a curious Illustration Of the
mutability of industries. The two
|
remains in company with the carving
| knife; and the solid silver spoons are
| plated now, having driven into OBJ
livion the common iron and britannia
! spoon of the tables of those days Peo-
pie had to eat with their knives then,
and it was Fanny Kemble who raised
a storm about the forks, and was
stormed at in turn for being Frenchi-
| fed and finicky, and who forced the
four-prong fork into use and saved
subsequent generations from the dan
ger of widening their mouths with their
scimitar- bladed knives.
The universal candlestick, on whose
| construction the artist in brass and
silver lavished his art, as well as the
humber ones of iron, with the inevi-
table and busy shutters, no longer form
a leading line in the hardware mer-
chants stock. A nail has be-
come too common and cheap a
thing nowadays to make it good
economy to spend time in picking
up the strays, the time given being
worth more than the nails; but in
those days nails were nails, and you
paid shilling pound for them, and
good care was taken that none were
wasted. For the most part they came
| from Belgium, where the peasants
made profit of the evening hours, ham
mering the nails out by hand. Then.
too, there have gone into the melting
pots all that paraphernalia of the fire
| place, where our grandmothers did
| their cooking before stoves came in:
the kettles, the bakers and the long
handled frying pans, while the old
andjrons, indispensables then. are now
ornaments Of the diminutive fireplaces
in the homes of the wealthy; there not
| because they are needed, but, like the
nose on Aaron's face, ''it's the fashion
| to. wear EN-
Then it is refreshing to learn how a.
Yankee invented the wood screw with
a gimlet point and drove the gimlets