Last Man Standing

Around 1920 automobile production was greater than 1.5 million cars per year and climbing, with total vehicles registered above 7.5 million, and climbing. Around that time the horse and mule population was hitting its peaks, over 25 million animals, after rising steadily and rapidly for the previous 80 years.

Think about that: In the roaring 20's, what we would consider modern times, the horse was still the dominant form of moving people and products (an interesting book, Horses At Work, expands on the subject in detail). While the railroad industry was growing, so to was the horse industry, for horse and wagon connected the rails to country.

In the late 1800's the mail order catalog appeared and grew mightily, providing the wide array of goods, shipped by rail and then horse, throughout the growing nation. Among the multitude of products offered, of course, were products for your horse. Reins and saddles, collars and tack, buggies and buggy whips. Horse accessories represented a large industry. But today only a few companies exist to produce products for your horse, assuming you have a horse.

Meanwhile, as everyone was riding around in the train, going to the railroad station in their horse and buggy (and then their Model T Ford), other things were afoot. We were listening to music and words on the "gramophone" or phonograph. By the 1920's though, the radio arrived and phonograph dealers and manufacturers were just flattened.  By the end of World War II the vinyl long playing record arrived and held dominance until CD's and the Internet. Phonograph dealers and manufacturers were flattened. Again.

Today I read that JC Penney is shutting down their big mail order catalog, following the same move by Sears some years ago. This follows the closure of other catalogs (e.g. Nordstrom's catalog operations) with the proximate cause attributed to the Internet, though there are doubtless other contributing factors as well. Now you cannot get your buggy whip from a catalog, you must use the internet. The only one I can find though is Jedediah's Buggy Whips.

So that might make Jedediah the last Buggy Whip Maker. His market his small, no doubt, but as he has little or no competition I bet he does a modest steady income among the horsey set and the period re-enactors.

He is the Last Man Standing, as may happen in many industries.

All the technological changes have effects. Industries and companies rise and fall. The collapse of one area does not mean that all the companies go away, just most of them. When just a few are left, the cut each others throats to survive. Finally just one (or a few widely spaced) are left to make a modest living. Horses to cars, catalogs to internet.

Of the phonograph record, the old vinyl LP, killed off by CD's and the Internet downloads: Today I read that sales of vinyl LP's more than doubled between 2007 and 2008 from 1.3 to 2.9 million units. In 2009 vinyl LP's are expected to continue strong growth, but perhaps not as rapidly. A tiny fraction of downloads but still, a media that was written off as dead is growing among a certain segment (or segments) of the market. Interesting, isn't it?
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