My $0.02 FWIW.
It's the numbers made (and NOT made) and the advertising/promotion effort made in "those" days.
Remington was not a small company - they were a big company with cash flow from large military sales of rolling-block type rifles and bayonets. The SxS shotgun production could not have been much of their total cash flow and therefore (I speculate) rated small output for advertising and promotion.
Also, E. Remington & Son was bought by Marcellus Hartley and associates in 1888, reorganized and renamed Remington Arms Company (RAC). These were business men - not nitty-gritty gunmakers who were fixated on gun manufacture only, and they looked at their purchase of Remington (and other companies, IIRC) as a means of making profit. I recall they looked into typewriter manufacature and other industrial products (a possible Lyman Cornelius Smith harmonic here?).
The actual large SxS production of Models 1894 and 1900 from AD1900 - 1910 was itself a "shift of gears" as rolling-block military rifle sales had fallen off by then.
The (c.1909) RAC decision to cease SxS production was a "meat & potatoes' BUSINESS APPRECIATION decision to better use the industrial space available to them to make more profit making a different product - in this case the early semi-auto shotgun. This was a wise BUSINESS decision from the profit aspect. I believe at this point there had been a corporate decision made NOT to expand their "bricks & mortar' facilities as they did not see sufficient return on investment.
With the appreciation of greater profit potential supplying materiel to Great Britain during WW1, corporate RAC management finally realized they needed a bigger manufacturing plant, starting building a modern factory and completed it in 1916.
Marcellus Hartley (et al) were businessmen - and corporate RAC eventually realized that trying to make a good profit on an American made quality SxS shotgun was NOT GOOD BUSINESS - especially for a big company that had the option of shifting gears to other (profit generating) production. Hartley et al didn't arrive at their station in the business world by being stupid - they got there by being smart. And it was a smart corporate decision in 1910 to get out of SxS shotgun manufacture and make something with more potential. RAC realized they had to take the expensive "hand-craft" out of their shotguns to make money. And history shows us that they were right.
Other companies lacked the corporate foresight and/or the company finances to shift to other industrial products, and bled (red ink) to death.
That's my take on it, anyway.
Last edited by Ian Nixon; 10/19/07 12:25 AM.
