Making a Fortune out of Tears 



The Story of a Child's Toy 

 By Harold Gary 



IN 1904 Clarence White, of North Ben- 

 nington, Vermont, was doing a large 

 business in stereoscopic photographs 

 and stereoscopes. He had more than four 

 hundred agents 

 on his list. 

 Sales amount- 

 ed to about 

 half a million a 

 year. Business 

 was so good 

 that a hundred 

 thousand dol- 

 lar-addition to 

 the factory was 

 made. Then, 

 in 1905 the 

 motion picture 

 came. The 

 stereoscopic 

 photograph 

 industry col- 

 lapsed. Said 

 the boys of the 

 country : 

 "Why should 

 we look at 

 stereoscopes when 

 pictures?" 



Clarence White started to hunt for 

 something new to manufacture. Toys of 

 various sorts were tried out. They had a 

 good sale only during the months preced- 

 ing Christmas. 



Discouraging conditions continued until 

 191 5. In the Spring of that year Clarence 

 VVhite came home one day to find his two 

 and a half-year old son in tears and his 

 mother discouraged. The youngster in- 

 sisted on riding his toy cast-iron fire- 

 department equipment to destruction. He 

 had already smashed the hose cart. The 

 tears were caused by his mother's refusal 

 to allow him to break down the fire engine 

 too. 



"Never mind," said father. "I'll build 

 you something that you can't break." 



The next night Clarence White brought 

 home a little three wheeled cart made of a 

 board, an upright handle and wooden circles 

 cut from another board. 



But the trouble had only begun. The 



we can see motion 



youngster who lived next door had seen the 

 cart and coveted it in the Biblical way, 

 which means that he took it. The neigh- 

 bor's wife brought it back in the evening 

 and made the White boy happy again, but 

 she explained also that her Crown Prince 



would be un- 

 controllable 

 until he had 

 one like it. He 

 got his cart, 

 too. So did 

 half a dozen 

 other young- 

 sters who lived 

 nearby . A 

 home demand 

 was created. 

 White began to 

 work at the 

 problem of 

 giving the boys 

 of the nation 

 carts like those 

 he had made 

 for Benning- 

 ton. 



He took out patents and made a dozen 

 carts to be tried out as samples in New 

 York. These were placed on the floor in a 

 New York department store. While they 

 were being unpacked one Saturday, a 

 woman from Plainfield, New Jersey, saw 

 them and carried one home. On the 

 following Monday morning half a dozen 

 Plainfield mothers trooped in for carts like 

 the one they had seen. The entire 

 shipment was sold during the day and the 

 toy buyer put in an order for ten gross. 



Bennington was on its industrial feet 

 again. Mr. White's father is a splendid 

 old-time mechanic. To-him was entrusted 

 the task of providing machines that would 

 turn out the little carts automatically. In 

 a few months the output had risen to 

 fifteen hundred carts a day. At no time 

 has production caught up with demand. 

 The first profits, amounting to one hundred 

 and twenty-five thousand dollars, were put 

 back in the business to buy machines. 

 On September 4, 1916, production had 

 increased to twenty-five hundred a day. 



The construction xif the little cart is 

 simplicity itself, but it pleases the 

 youngsters, so the production is rapidly 

 approaching thirty-five hundred a day 



373 



