Over all it is far easier to find a high quality pre war WWI double than a between the wars or after WWII. I know a lot of junk was made as well but there just are very few high quality guns made at all after this. Most double makers were closed or making other guns. The trained labor pool died in the wars or just got old and retired. Fewer follow on apprenticed labor came along. And shooting declined as a major part time as interest changed. The entire industry declined. Throw in a world wide depression that lasted more than a decade and the end of an era just happened
Production dropped pretty significantly after WWI. If you stop to think about it, in England with their very serious casualties--and a lot of non-inheriting sons of wealthy families who never came home--there must have been a bunch of nice doubles available on the used market. And of course, the already mentioned problem of skilled workers in the trades also dying in the trenches.
Over here, we saw a slow turn in the direction of pumps and autoloaders. And then along came the Depression, from which the American sxs industry never really recovered. The best they could do, in terms of really significant numbers, was to have decent sxs made for them in Japan. The days of the Ithaca SKB, Browning BSS, and Winchester 23 and Parker Reproduction were pretty much the last gasp of storied American gun companies putting their names on pretty nice sxs.
