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Queen City Forging in the 1920's -- The carriage industry declines and is replaced with custom forging! |
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The No. 11 Catalog of 1921 shows evidence of the decline of the carriage industry. |
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| The first items shown are no longer step irons or axle parts but the hardware for canopy tops, a product also used on many early automobiles. | ||||||||||||||||
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Here is what the owners must have faced during the 1920's. The company, once prosperous and employing perhaps 100 people, was seeing its market change. The new market most likely to use the products it could produce was too geographically distant to serve competitively. Business has declined to the extent that now there are about 35 employees. They realized that they must shift to producing custom forgings and new products. The company was having some success in this endeavor of custom frogings, although not experiencing the kind of prosperity of the late 1800's. |
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The beginning of Gordon "Spin-On" Horseshoes Next came the economic depression which began in 1929. In 1931, a young man named John Gordon asked the Queen City Forging Co. to produce a specialty item for him -- pitching horseshoes. John Gordon was a champion pitcher who had filed a patent for his design of shoes and believed he could successfully market them. The company agreed to participate with him and began production of the Gordon "Spin-On" horseshoe. Evidence, once again, that Queen City Forging was reaching out for new business. Production of the Gordon Horseshoes continues to the present. |
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