User:Dpbsmith/Ames

Ames Shovel Works (1901: Ames Shovel and Tool Company; 1999: Ames True Temper) was an industrial giant of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

It is traditionally said to have been founded by Captain John Ames in West Bridgewater in 1774. Ames was the first producer of metal-bladed shovels in America/

The company's real history began in 1803 John Ames' son Oliver Ames settled in Easton, Massachusetts, which was both an important iron producer and in a location with potential for water power, and started the Ames Shovel Company. The enterprise became extremely successful. During the War of 1812 the Embargo Act gave Ames a monopoly on the sale of shovels. The construction of the Erie Canal created a huge demand for shovels, as did the 1849 California Gold Rush, by which time the Ames company was already a million-dollar company

By the turn of the century the Ames Shovel Company was manufacturing three-fifths of the world's shovels, and the Ames family was one of the wealthiest and most prominent families in Massachusetts.

An 1891 letter refers to an individual as being "as well known to the hardware trade as an Ames shovel."

A 1901 New York Times story reported:
 * the latest combination to be announced on Wall Street is the Shovel Trust, which was formally announced yesterday.... The name adopted is the Ames Shovel and Tool Company The legal work... was engineereed byt he law department of the Union Pacific. The combination is made up of five companies... the Ames Shovel Works of Massachusetts, the Rowland Shovel Works of Philadelphia, the Wright & Alford Shovel Works of Terre Haute, the St. Louis Shovel Works, and the H. M. Meyers Shovel Works of Beaver Falls, Penn.... The reason for the consolidation is said to be the better protection of [their] patents... [but] the relative size of the constituent companies makes it probable that the combination must aim at controlling the bulk of American output.