CHAPTER V.

LAUNCHED ON THE COMMERCIAL WORLD

Clarence Walker Seamans was born in Ilion, and his first employment was in assisting his father, who had charge of the gunsmithing department of the Remington factory. This was in 1869, when he was only fifteen years old, and he continued in this service through the memorable years 1873 and 1874. In the following year, however, a company of Ilion men of means bought a silver mine in Utah and sent young Seamans to the mine to look after their interests. Here he remained for the next three years.

In 1878 we find Seamans again in Ilion, just at the time when Fairbanks & Company had been intrusted with the selling agency for the typewriter. They needed some one to look after this branch of the business, and Yost recommended Seamans. Philo Remington thought him too young, and was not favorably disposed to the selection. Henry H. Benedict, however, strongly advised that Seamans be appointed, and this was finally done.

Seamans entered upon his new work with enthusiasm and enterprise. He held his position with Fairbanks & Company for three years, and they were years of tremendous struggle. Nevertheless some progress was made, and in the year 1881, when E. Remington & Sons decided to take over the selling agency, the efficient work already done by Seamans resulted in his appointment as the sales head of their typewriter business. Under this new arrangement progress became more pronounced, but still the business was absurdly small, judged by present-day standards. The actual sales in this year numbered 1200 machines.

These results did not satisfy Seamans, who soon began to form broader plans. He entered into negotiations with Mr. Henry H. Benedict and Mr. W. O. Wyckoff of Ithaca, N. Y., a widely known and successful court reporter, which resulted in the organization, on August 1, 1882, of the historic firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict. The new firm made a contract with the Remingtons, who conceded to them the selling agency for the entire world. They agreed to take all the machines the Remingtons could build, who on their part agreed to furnish all that could be sold. This contract marked the turning point in the history of the writing machine.

The members of the firm of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict were the real founders of the commercial success of the typewriter, and the personalities of these three men are as interesting as their achievements were notable.

William Ozmun Wyckoff was a giant of a man, in mind, heart and body, robust and whole-souled, whose dauntless courage and invincible faith in the typewriter were reminiscent of Densmore. When the Remingtons first began to manufacture the typewriter, he saw one of the new machines, and his own profession of court reporter gave him an instant vision of its future. He immediately secured the selling agency for Central New York State and his first act was to place the typewriter in service in his own offices in Ithaca. Here, at the very outset, he encountered a situation which furnished a real test of his faith. Every member of his staff rebelled against the use of the new machines. But Wyckoff was equal to situations of that sort. “Use it or quit,” was his answer, and they used it. This was all very well for a start, but it was quite different in the great outside territory, where the possible buyers were not open to this particular form of sales argument. One of the first to enter Wyckoff’s employ as typewriter salesman was J. Walter Earle, hardly more than a boy then, who many years after became president of the Remington Typewriter Company. The letters written by Wyckoff to Earle during the late seventies, filled with sage advice and admonition, selling suggestions and unfailing encouragement, supply a graphic picture of all that the typewriter salesman of that day was “up against.” They also furnish an intimate and attractive picture of the man Wyckoff himself, sketched unconsciously by his own hand.

WILLIAM O. WYCKOFF
CLARENCE W. SEAMANS
HENRY H. BENEDICT