100,000,000 Saws

The ancient & honorable firm of Henry Disston & Sons, Inc., No. 1 U. S. saw-makers, jubilantly prepared to celebrate its 100th birthday this week. In its big 65-acre, 66-building plant on the banks of the Delaware River in the Philadelphia suburb of Tacony, 2,000 penknives had been grinding-mementos-to-be for the company's employes. Ready for presentation to employees who had served the firm from 20 to 70 years apiece were 539 special service pins. It was to be a wonderful three-day holiday with games, entertainment, concerts, etc. for Disston workers, their families, friends, neighbors, and all the residents of Tacony. Abruptly, sorrowfully, last week, it was called off.

For the first time in 54 years the benevolent firm of Disston had a serious strike on its hands. It began when the dominant A. F. of L. union of United Saw, File & Steel Products Workers called a walkout- ostensibly for a union shop and a 10% pay rise, really to bring recalcitrant members of the C. I. O. Steel Workers Organizing Committee union (recently defeated in an NLRB election at the plant) into line. Glum at having their party called off, Disston workers trod their picket line without bitterness. Said one laconic oldtimer: "Well, they wanted a closed shop-and they got it."

Most U. S. saws came from England when Toolmaker Henry Disston, 21, went into business for himself 100 years ago. Founder Disston soon changed that. First U. S. sawmaker to standardize his product, give it a trade name and produce it in quantity, he ran away from the field in 1855 by pouring from his own furnace the first crucible saw steel ever cast in the U. S. From pictures of old Roman and Egyptian saws he designed, in 1874, the first skew-backed (curved) carpenter's handsaw, which is still Disston's No. 1 specialty and best seller-"The saw most carpenters use."

Today Disston makes over 5,000,000 saws and blades a year, does some 75% of the U. S. handsaw business. Its saws & blades vary from a tiny jeweler's bandsaw blade (thickness: .005 in.) with 88 teeth to the inch, to a ten-foot spiral, inserted-tooth monster used for lumber and metal cutting (two were ordered last week for Allied munitions plants). Disston knives, files and other tools cut sugar beets, chop gunpowder, smooth bricks, polish playing-card backs, perforate newspapers, slice caramels. Disston saws also go to amateur musicians and into vaudeville at the rate of about 500 a year. Specially made, musical saws are flat-ground, straight-backed, smooth so the notes will run through the whole blade.

But the high-grade steel that Disston makes in its own furnace has other uses too. Reputedly the leading U. S. private maker of light tank armor, Disston, to handle war orders, put up $250.000 worth of new buildings in 1938-39, has virtually completed a new $300,000 armor-plate plant. Disston saw $1.250,000 worth of war orders held up by its strike last week. Stopped cold was a rush order for armored plane seats for fighting planes now in service in France. Interrupted were U. S. Army orders for armored scout cars, gun shields, light armor plate.

This year Disston expects to come close to its 1929 sales record: $12,000,000 (about two-thirds from saws). With a net worth of about $8,500,000, Disston does not tell its profits, is owned lock-stock-&-barrel by the Disston family, who are hardy, friendly, prolific. Six Disstons work for the company today. Oldest is Board Chairman Henry (grandson of Founder Henry), who presides over board meetings from his apartment at Philadelphia's Bellevue-Stratford. Head of purchasing is sporty William Dunlop Disston, 52, whose son William, now in the shops, is the first fourth-generation Disston to enter the business. Seventh president of Disston is mild, balding Samuel Horace Disston, 59, grandson of Founder Henry's brother. He hardened files, sharpened saws, etc., for eleven years before the family let him out of the shops. Thoroughly acquainted with every angle of the vast business, he carries a black card in his pocket which, lettered in Chinese, he translates as: CONFUCIUS SAY DISSTON HAS THE EDGE.

Last week President Disston moseyed through his strikebound plant, chatting with watchmen, smiling at a troupe of young kittens tangled up in the heaps of sawdust. He announced that the firm would content itself with presenting engraved Disston 0-95 Masterpiece saws to

Philadelphia's Mayor Lamberton, Pennsylvania's Governor James and the U. S.'s President Roosevelt in commemoration of its 100th birthday and the 100,000,000 saws it has made.

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