… from the editors of the May 1903 issue of The Carriage Monthly, that is.

Progressive Excellence:

“It is no boast to say that American carriages are the best in the world. This statement will be controverted by many English makers. When the refutation is carefully analyzed it will be found that the claims for superiority in English-made vehicles of the better class are lacking in merit from the American standpoint. The foreign exhibits of carriages, made during the past decade, were carefully examined by practical builders, by experts and designers, without learning much from the best foreign work. Superiority in carriage work cannot be determined by simply referring to ornamentation or external finish. There is such a thing as internal finish, and in this respect the American carriage builder excels. This finish is not apparent to the average eye, nor perhaps even to the expert eye, but there is a mechanical finish which represents the highest type of skill, ingenuity and design. Every carriage builder knows that it is possible to vary the cost of a carriage even as much as 50 per cent, and yet to have two carriages representing that difference in cost look so much alike that not one in a hundred purchasers could tell one from the other. This, of course, does not apply to the cheaper grades of vehicles. The trade of making vehicles “in the white” stimulated what might be termed internal finish, for want of a better term. Work in the white enables the buyer or builder to see and know pretty nearly what he is getting. Work in the white is by no means an American system, but it has done very much to develop carriage building to what it is along its higher lines. When we look at work in the white we can see what is wood, what is iron, what is steel; how they are treated, assembled and joined, and how the grain of one piece wood has been laid to secure the greatest possible strength with the maximum lightness. The one feature of American carriage building is the exquisite joining. This joining does not show in the finished vehicle. Joints are the theoretical weak spots in a vehicle. To use material so that there will be practically no joints, but one solid, yet elastic, piece of work is the objective point. A carriage is strained at every point of its surface, so to speak, theoretically at least. These strainings constitute the wearing, yet in a well-made vehicle it is difficult to discover side strains long after the carriage has been built.

“The expert maturing of wood is a very important point, especially with hickory for spokes and felloes and with elm for hubs. In the best carriages this wood is naturally seasoned; in the cheaper vehicles artificial drying is resorted to, which sometimes, and very often, drives the sap out too quickly, the fibres being compressed by heavy weights instead of being compressed by the natural process. This difference in drying, of course, cannot be detected by the eye. The strain in a carriage naturally comes on the body, rockers, springs, spring bolts, king bolt and fifth wheel. The art of the carriage builder lies in so arranging and usng the lumber, iron and steel so as to practically make a unit of all, at the same time giving to the completed work the elastic quality which is inherent in material, and which the structure of a carriage demands.

“American carriage builders are giving to these fine points of construction a great degree of study and attention. They are studying the nature and material more closely. They are getting at the soul of wood to understand how to use it without violating its instincts, as it were, for wood has instincts, and so have iron and steel, as well as human beings.” —from the May 1903 issue of  The Carriage Monthly, courtesy of the CMA Library & Archives

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Tomorrow, I’ll post the editors’ opinions (from that same issue) on the state of “Techincal Training” here in the U.S. and abroad.