LAUNCHED ON THE COMMERCIAL WORLD
Clarence Walker Seamans was born in Ilion, and his first employment
was in assisting his father, who had charge of the gunsmithing
department of the Remington factory. This was in 1869, when he was
only fifteen years old, and he continued in this service through
the memorable years 1873 and 1874. In the following year, however,
a company of Ilion men of means bought a silver mine in Utah and
sent young Seamans to the mine to look after their interests. Here
he remained for the next three years.
In 1878 we find Seamans again in Ilion, just at the time when
Fairbanks & Company had been intrusted with the selling agency for
the typewriter. They needed some one to look after this branch of the
business, and Yost recommended Seamans. Philo Remington thought him
too young, and was not favorably disposed to the selection. Henry
H. Benedict, however, strongly advised that Seamans be appointed,
and this was finally done.
Seamans entered upon his new work with enthusiasm and enterprise. He
held his position with Fairbanks & Company for three years, and they
were years of tremendous struggle. Nevertheless some progress was
made, and in the year 1881, when E. Remington & Sons decided to take
over the selling agency, the efficient work already done by Seamans
resulted in his appointment as the sales head of their typewriter
business. Under this new arrangement progress became more pronounced,
but still the business was absurdly small, judged by present-day
standards. The actual sales in this year numbered 1200 machines.
These results did not satisfy Seamans, who soon began to form broader
plans. He entered into negotiations with Mr. Henry H. Benedict and
Mr. W. O. Wyckoff of Ithaca, N. Y., a widely known and successful
court reporter, which resulted in the organization, on August 1, 1882,
of the historic firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict. The new firm
made a contract with the Remingtons, who conceded to them the selling
agency for the entire world. They agreed to take all the machines the
Remingtons could build, who on their part agreed to furnish all that
could be sold. This contract marked the turning point in the history
of the writing machine.
The members of the firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict were the
real founders of the commercial success of the typewriter, and
the personalities of these three men are as interesting as their
achievements were notable.
William Ozmun Wyckoff was a giant of a man, in mind, heart and body,
robust and whole-souled, whose dauntless courage and invincible faith
in the typewriter were reminiscent of Densmore. When the Remingtons
first began to manufacture the typewriter, he saw one of the new
machines, and his own profession of court reporter gave him an
instant vision of its future. He immediately secured the selling
agency for Central New York State and his first act was to place
the typewriter in service in his own offices in Ithaca. Here, at
the very outset, he encountered a situation which furnished a real
test of his faith. Every member of his staff rebelled against the
use of the new machines. But Wyckoff was equal to situations of that
sort. "Use it or quit," was his answer, and they used it. This was
all very well for a start, but it was quite different in the great
outside territory, where the possible buyers were not open to this
particular form of sales argument. One of the first to enter Wyckoff's
employ as typewriter salesman was J. Walter Earle, hardly more than
a boy then, who many years after became president of the Remington
Typewriter Company. The letters written by Wyckoff to Earle during
the late seventies, filled with sage advice and admonition, selling
suggestions and unfailing encouragement, supply a graphic picture of
all that the typewriter salesman of that day was "up against." They
also furnish an intimate and attractive picture of the man Wyckoff
himself, sketched unconsciously by his own hand.
The characteristics of the two other members of the firm, Clarence
W. Seamans and Henry H. Benedict, have already revealed themselves in
this story. Seamans, like Yost, was a wonderful salesman. Better still,
he was a natural leader, with a gift for the successful handling of
marketing problems which proved of incalculable value in establishing
the business on a successful basis. Mr. Benedict likewise possessed
marketing abilities of a high order, which he later demonstrated by
his important work in organizing the typewriter business in Europe,
where the difficulties encountered were even greater than in the
American field. He possessed a habit of thoroughness, combined with
a foresight and soundness of business judgment which, time and again,
were of vital service to the firm. Taken all in all, these three men
represented a combination of qualities not often found in a business
partnership.
The new firm possessed unbounded energy and enthusiasm but its material
resources were limited. Many discouragements were encountered, but
they overcame them all and the business increased steadily. The firm
started in a very limited fashion, occupying a corner of the Remington
concern's office at 281 Broadway, New York, the staff consisting of a
few clerks with two or three mechanics, perhaps numbering ten persons
in all. In 1884 the firm moved to its own offices at 339 Broadway.
In the winter of 1885-1886, while the business was in the full tide
of success, a disquieting rumor reached the three partners that the
Remingtons were planning to sell their interest in the typewriter. It
had been known for years that the old house, owing mainly to wasteful
factory management, had been sinking deeper and deeper into debt,
and now it seemed that the crisis had come. Here was a situation
which imperiled the future of the whole enterprise, but a difficulty
is often a disguised opportunity, and so it proved to be in this case.
Henry H. Benedict immediately took the train to Ilion and his
interview with Philo Remington in March, 1886, which resulted in
the transfer of the ownership of the typewriter, is another one of
the big moments in this story. Here is the account of what happened,
as told by Mr. Benedict himself.
"I arrived in the morning and spent the fore-noon with Mr. Philo
Remington. I began by asking him if the rumor was true that they
were thinking of disposing of their typewriter interests. He said
it was true. I said, 'But why do you do this?' He replied, 'We need
money.' I said, 'May I ask for what purpose?' He replied, 'To pay our
debts.' 'But,' I said, 'you could not expect to get for the typewriter
enough to pay a tenth of your debts.' 'Well, perhaps not,' he said,
'but it would satisfy the more pressing of our creditors.'
"'Mr. Remington,' I said, 'I was with you for thirteen years, and
served you to the best of my ability, and I was absolutely loyal
to you. I am going to be loyal now. My advice to you is not to sell
your typewriter. The amount of money you would get would not go far;
ninety per cent of your creditors would still be unpaid, and they
will be after you more savagely if you pay the claims of others and
leave theirs unsatisfied.'
"He shook his head and said, 'Well, we think we had better sell.' 'Is
that your final decision?' I asked. He answered, 'Yes, I think
so.' I said, 'Have you a customer for your plant?' 'Well,' he said,
'there are some people talking about taking it.' 'Have you committed
yourself to them?' I asked. He replied, 'No, not absolutely.' 'You're
determined to sell, are you?' 'Yes!'
"'Very well,' I said. 'I have given my advice. Now I want to buy
the plant.'
"Then we began to talk business, and before night I telegraphed to
New York to send me a certified check for ten thousand dollars to
bind the bargain."
Thus it was that the entire plant used in the manufacture of the
machine, together with all patent rights, franchises, etc., necessary
to a complete control of the business were purchased by Wyckoff,
Seamans & Benedict. The manufacturing plant was established in the
building formerly occupied by the Agricultural Works, and W. K. Jenne
was installed as mechanical superintendent. The typewriter enterprise
since that day has been entirely separate and distinct from the other
activities with which the name Remington is associated, and thus it
escaped the disasters which shortly after befell the old and honored
house of E. Remington & Sons.
In 1888 the need for greater office facilities had become so urgent
that Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict removed their New York office to 327
Broadway, which remained their home office for nearly thirty years. At
first only one or two floors were occupied, then the entire building,
and finally the two additional buildings on either side. In 1892 the
original co-partnership was changed into a mercantile corporation which
included the manufacturing company, and in 1903 the corporate name was
changed to Remington Typewriter Company, of which Mr. Benedict became
the first president. Of the three members of the original firm, Wyckoff
died in 1895 and Seamans in 1915. Henry H. Benedict, the surviving
partner, has been from the beginning a director of the company, and
enjoys in this anniversary year a unique distinction as the only man
now living whose identification with the typewriter business has been
continuous throughout the entire fifty years of its history.
The progress of the typewriter, once a real start had been made,
continued without serious interruption. The very conditions which
made early progress so slow and difficult now began to reverse
themselves. The machine, with widening opportunities, proved itself
more than ever a most efficient self-advertiser, and every typewriter
in actual service carried its own message of legibility and utility
to many thousands.
In course of time typewriting became as familiar as pen writing in
business correspondence, and the superior speed of the machine soon
suggested new uses for which the pen had never been employed. The
typewritten circular letter came into being, the forerunner of
the various duplicating devices, and indeed of the whole system of
direct-by-mail advertising as we know it today. The United States
mail bags soon felt, in their bulkier contents, the impetus of the new
machine. General business also felt this impetus. Formerly lashed to a
pen point, it now became articulate, and as business creates business,
so the new forms of business activity, fostered by the typewriter,
opened new and wider opportunities for ever increasing sales. The
machine, which won its entry as a labor saver, soon intrenched itself
as a business builder, and general business, which was merely helped
by the machine at the outset, became completely transformed by it in
the end.
This wonderful transition has come about so gradually that the business
world, though proudly aware of the fact itself, is only dimly conscious
of the part played by the great transforming factor. We call this
the age of big business, and so it is, but it is only necessary to
compare the average business office and business methods of today
with those of fifty years ago to realize the extent to which modern
business is an actual outcome of the writing machine.
The story of the typewriter in Europe, and in foreign countries
generally, is very nearly a repetition of its history in the United
States. In every case we find the same early years of struggle and
in the end the same transforming influence on business and business
methods. The introductory struggle in America was hard enough,
but in the Old World there were some even greater obstacles to be
encountered. Here the writing machine was forced to make headway
against the more deliberate and leisurely habits of the people, and the
more deeply rooted conservatism of an older civilization. There were
also some graver practical difficulties, as we shall presently see.
The systematic invasion of the European market began very soon after
the firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict took up their great selling
task, and it was mainly through the efforts of Mr. Benedict that the
foundations of the business were laid in the Old World countries. Prior
to this time E. Remington & Sons had made their own attack on the
British market, and their first British catalogue, published over the
imprint of their London address, 50-54 Queen Victoria Street, E. C.,
contains an impressive list of press notices in British journals,
published at different times in 1876, also a list of patrons which
includes the King of the Netherlands, the Duke of Bedford, the Marquis
of Salisbury, Earl Granville and other notables of the period. There
is testimonial evidence in this old catalogue that machines were
sold in England as early as the year 1874, and similar early efforts
are traceable in other European countries. But this early selling
effort was not sustained, and it was more than ten years later
before any real impression was made on the European market. The
London office of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict was opened in 1886,
and by the year 1890 the machine had begun to occupy an important
place in the British commercial world. The successful introduction
of the machine in most of the Continental European countries belongs
to the same period. Offices were opened in Paris in 1884, and direct
representation was established in Belgium in 1888, Italy in 1889,
Holland in 1890, Denmark in 1893, and Greece in 1896. The German
market was entered in 1883, and the Russian, with a special machine
equipped to write the Russian characters, in 1885. From the very
outset of its career in Europe the typewriter has been used by
celebrities without number. Many of the crowned heads have been
included among its personal users. Lloyd George, many years ago,
while still an obscure and struggling attorney in Wales, owned and
operated a Model 2 Remington. Count Tolstoi, that earnest disciple
of the primitive life, to whom modern machinery in every form was
abhorrent, was glad to make an exception in its favor, and many of
his extant photographs show him in the act of giving direct dictation
to his daughter on the typewriter. Indeed it is not surprising to
find the writing machine thus intimately associated with the great,
for the very nature of its service, the conservation of brain effort,
places it in a far different class from any mere manual labor saver.
One development of the typewriter business in nearly all foreign
countries is totally different from anything known in America. We
have already spoken of the modern system of commercial education as
the creation of the typewriter. In America, however, the typewriter
companies and commercial schools, though each is a necessity to the
other, have grown up as distinct and separate institutions. This may
be accounted for by the fact that the germ of our modern commercial
school system existed in a few of the so-called "business colleges"
before the days of the typewriter. In England also, before the advent
of the writing machine, we find a few schools teaching the recently
invented art of phonography, the latter-day development of the ancient
art of shorthand. In other foreign countries, however, there was not
even the germ of the commercial school as we know it today.
If the task of getting operators during the early days of the
business was a difficult one in America, in other countries it
was formidable. It soon became evident that the problem could be
solved only in one way, by the founding of schools of shorthand and
typewriting, owned and operated by the typewriter company itself. This
was the origin of the Remington system of commercial schools, which
were established by the company or its selling representatives in
practically every country on earth, with the one conspicuous exception
of the United States. Even in Great Britain it was found necessary
to establish these schools at several points in order to insure a
sufficient supply of competent operators, and in the countries of
Continental Europe there was no other recourse.
The Remington schools at Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Petrograd and
many other cities throughout Europe were established soon after the
machine had invaded these markets. In other continents the business
met similar conditions and went through the same process. In Australia
the great Remington schools at Melbourne, Sydney and other cities
have graduated many thousands of operators; so also in South Africa,
and throughout the entire South American continent, where not only
the large centers but even many of the smaller cities now have their
Remington schools. In the Asiatic countries the problem of securing
competent stenographers and typists assumed another phase. Here the
stenographers and typists are all natives, Chinese, Japanese, Siamese,
Javanese, Hindu, etc., and they are all men, for this is one part
of the world where the modern girl typist has not yet arrived. In
the countries of the Far East, the Chinese predominate among the
practitioners of the "twin arts." It's a stiff job, that of acquiring
such mastery of a foreign language that the stenographer can take
and transcribe accurately the shorthand notes taken from dictation
in that language, but the Oriental peoples, with their remarkable
linguistic gifts, have proved equal to the task.
The schools of shorthand and typewriting in the Eastern countries are
easily the most interesting in all the world, and it is noteworthy
that these schools maintain the highest standards of efficiency. The
Remington schools in various cities throughout India, which train the
Babu or educated native in the "twin arts," have been for many years
the main source of supply of the typists employed in all branches of
the Indian Government service.
The founders of the typewriter business had little realization that
out of their efforts would come a new plan of practical education;
still less did they realize that over a great part of the earth's
surface the task of developing this plan would fall on the manufacturer
himself. In their broad effect on human society, the by-products of
the typewriter business, in more than one phase, have been quite as
important as the main idea.