GregSY and others: You need to understand that Parker Brothers was making less than 100 guns per year in 1934, and was said to have twenty senior gunmakers doing make-work projects as sort of a Depression-era private-employer-funded unemployment/welfare program. Contrary to Peter Johnson's cheerleading conjecture, the Parker gunworks operation was not a valuable asset, but more a serious cash-draining liability. The machinery was old, some dating to the civil war and before.
Parker Brothers Makers was not an entity of any sort, but merely a "shop within the shop," according to the superintendent Walter King. There was raw inventory and some work in process, 30 or 40 skilled workers, mostly under- or unemployed, and the good will of the Parker name, which was advertised as The Parker Gun (not Parker Brothers makers).
It is a fact that The Charles Parker Co., Inc. continued to the use Parker Brothers name in connection with other lines of products; the trade name originated in June 1869 in connection with the factory being called The Parker Brothers Machine and Gun Works. And it's a fact that Remington rented the Parker Brothers factory building for three years, before moving the operation to Ilion in 1937/38. My job has been to find facts like these while reading as much contemporary literature as possible to exlclude the existance of conflicting facts; then string it all together and draw logical but not overbroad conclusions.
An affliction endemic to "gun cranks," then and now, is the imputing of too much twenty-first-century organized thought process into nineteenth and early twentieth century off-the-cuff transactions. The Parker Gun was known as The Parker Gun, and was produced by a non-entity called Parker Brothers Makers. Given that Remington was backed by DuPont, and The Parker Gun was a losing proposition in 1934, the idea was that Remington enhance its image by adding a fine side by side to its arsenal. John Olin had his Winchester Model 21; for the Du Ponts it was monkey see, monkey do.
This is all well documented, albeit in bits and pieces, in the literature of the day. No one then ever said that Remington sought to avoid products liability, but it was then and still is a common and prudent business practice. Yet it is probably more likely that Remington, to implement the Du Pont family's aspirations to level the playing field with john Olin, quite simply set out to acquire for as little as possible "The Parker Gun" trade mark, plus existig inventory, work in process, and tooling, with the ability to pick and choose among the skilled gunmakers who, truth be told, didn't have any options, given the state of the economy.
One could conclude that DuPont/Remington saw no value in the name of the old gun works painted on the factory in Meriden CT. Remington acquired Parker to enhance its own image as a gunmaker, and to inject "Parker Brothers Makers" into the fray would at best confuse the issue. Remington intended to be the maker! I say again, REMINGTON INTENDED TO BE THE MAKER. The idea was to enhance their own image, not prepetuate the name of an old factory in another city and state
If you would bring yourself up to speed by looking at the bunch of Parker catalogs now for sale on eBay at $4,200 to start, you will notice the product name is "The Parker Gun" (1908 Pine Cone) and "Parker Guns" (1929 Flying Geese); no mention of Parker Brothers Maker on the covers. Notice the ca.1907 postcard says, "The Parker Gun" as the trade mark, while mentioning Parker Brothers Makers in the subscript. The product was The Parker Gun. The fact that a shop within a factory at Meriden CT was called the Parker Brothers Gun Works was of little consequence when Parker Brothers had its own catalogs printed as early as 1908, and was of little consequence in 1934 when the 800 pound gorilla (DuPont/Remington) picked and chose what they wanted of a finincially challanged gunmaker in Meriden CT.
One way to get a grip on this stuff is to be well read on the topics that presented themselves as issues when the guns were in current production. By getting a nineteenth century street sense, many of the mysteries are easy to dope out or think through. Given that mention of Parker Brothers Makers was always subsidiary to "The Parker Gun" in Parker Brothers' own advertising, and given that Remington only rented the old Parker Brothers Gun works for a short time until it could remove the operation to Ilion NY, what purpose would have been served by Remington negotiating to acquire the Parker Brothers name in 1934? None that I can see. But 20-20 hindsight is that Remington might have had a leg to stand on when it sued the new Parker Bros Makers of the O/U.
Greg: None of this is in the context of knowing it all; some of us keep trying, however. One way is to seperate the wheat from the chaff by reading those "obscure" old books and comparing notes with others who do the same. I notice one tread about Damascus barrels that has 27,000 hits and counting; a few people on this website are up to speed on the esotheric barrel-forging issue.
The way we get educated is by asking questions and trying to get the best quality answers possible. Some questions are not directy answerable because the underlying facts went without saying at the time. Blacksmiths were almost by definition not literate, and did not write down their exact observations in re: selecting raw materials and banging out barrel tubes in the nineteenth century. Nor did the powers that be at Remington see fit to publish their inner thoughts upon acquiring The Parker Gun in 1934, yet there were retrospectives published over the years. But the idea that one would announce the legal considerations in 1934 and anything short of such official pronouncements not being sufficient for some web junkie in 2007; well, GregSY, you have set the bar too high. You shall go unconvinced.
It's pick and shovel work finding this stuff and time consuming to spit it out to those few who trive on such minutia. For one who announces that his main accomplishment in reading is to spill his chocolate milk on books, my advice is to stop reading. Meanwhile, I'd like to know the factual basis for your opinions if you don't read much or not at all.
I just received my royalty statement for the 6 months ended 6/30/07 from Safari Press, and my Parker Guns: The "Old Reliable" (Safari Press 1997, 2004 2nd print.) has topped 8,000 copies sold; meanwhile, orders for the Signed Limited 500 Edition of my new book, Parker Guns: Shooting Flying and the American Experience (Collector Books, Paducha KY, to be released summer 2008), are rolling in. It's gratifying that some people find me credible and still read books. EDM
