CUTLER, MANASSEH (1742-1823), American clergyman, was born in Killingly, Connecticut, on the 13th of May 1742. He graduated at Yale College in 1765, and after being a school teacher and a merchant, and occasionally appearing in the courts as a lawyer, he decided to enter the ministry, and from 1771 until his death was pastor of the Congregational church at what is now Hamilton, but until 1793 was a parish of Ipswich, Massachusetts. During the War of Independence he was for several months in 1776 chaplain to the regiment of Colonel Ebenezer Francis, raised for the defence of Boston; and in 1778, as chaplain to the brigade of General Jonathan Titcomb (1728-1817), he took part in General John Sullivan’s expedition to Rhode Island. Soon after his return from this expedition he fitted himself for the practice of medicine, in order to supplement the scanty income of a minister, and in 1782 he established a private boarding school, which he conducted for about a quarter of a century. In 1786 he became interested in the settlement of western lands, and in the following year, as agent of the Ohio Company (q.v.), which he had taken a prominent part in organizing, he made a contract with Congress, whereby his associates, former soldiers in the War of Independence, might purchase, with the certificates of indebtedness issued to them by the government for their services, 1,500,000 acres of land in the region north of the Ohio at the mouth of the Muskingum river. He also took a leading part in drafting the famous Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwest Territory, the instrument as it was finally presented to Congress by Nathan Dane (1752-1835), a Massachusetts delegate, probably being largely Cutler’s work. From 1801 to 1805 he was a Federalist representative in Congress. He died at Hamilton, Massachusetts, on the 28th of July 1823. A versatile man, Cutler was one of the early members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and besides being proficient in the theology, law and medicine of his day, conducted painstaking astronomical and meteorological investigations, and was one of the first Americans to make researches of a real scientific value in botany. In 1789 the degree of doctor of laws was conferred upon him by Yale.
See William P. and Julia P. Cutler, The Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1888); and an article, “The Ordinance of 1787 and Dr Manasseh Cutler,” by W. F. Poole, in vol. 122 of the North American Review.
CUTLERY (Fr. coutellerie, from the Lat. cultellus, a little knife), a branch of industry which originally embraced the manufacture of all cutting instruments of whatever form or material. The progress of manufacturing industry has, however, detached from it the fabrication of several kinds of edge-tools, saws and similar implements, the manufacture of which is now regarded as forming distinct branches of trade. On the other hand modern cutlery includes a great number of articles which are not strictly cutting instruments, but which, owing to their more or less intimate relation to table or pocket cutlery, are classed with such articles for convenience’ sake. A steel table or carving fork, for example, is an important article of cutlery, although it is not a cutting tool.
The original cutting instruments used by the human race consisted of fragments of flint, obsidian, or similar stones, rudely flaked or chipped to a cutting edge; and of these tools numerous remains yet exist. Stone knives and other tools must have been employed for a long period by the prehistoric races of mankind, as their later productions show great perfection of form and finish. In the Bronze period, which succeeded the Stone Age, the cutlery of our ancestors was fabricated of that alloy. The use of iron was introduced at a later but still remote period; and it now, in the form of steel, is the staple article from which cutlery is manufactured.
From the earliest period in English history the manufacture of cutlery has been peculiarly associated with the town of Sheffield, the prominence of which in this manufacture in his own age is attested by Chaucer, who says of the miller of Trumpington—
“A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose.”
That town still retains a practical monopoly of the ordinary cutlery trade of Great Britain, and remains the chief centre of the industry for the whole world. Its influence on methods of production has also been widely extended; for instance, many Sheffield workmen emigrated to the United States of America to take part in the manufacture of pocket-knives when it was started in Connecticut towards the middle of the 19th century.
The thwitel or whittle of Chaucer’s time was a very poor rude implement, consisting of a blade of bar steel fastened into a wooden or horn handle. It was used for cutting food as well as for the numerous miscellaneous duties which now fall to the pocket-knife. To the whittle succeeded the Jack knife,—the Jacques-de-Liége, or Jock-te-leg of the Scottish James VI.,—which formed the prototype of the modern clasp-knife, inasmuch as the blade closed into a groove in the handle. About the beginning of the 17th century, the pocket-knife with spring back was introduced, and no marked improvement thereafter took place till the early part of the 19th century. In 1624, two centuries after the incorporation of the Cutlers’ Company of London, the cutlers of Hallamshire—the name of the district of which Sheffield is the centre—were formed into a body corporate for the protection of the “industry, labour, and reputation” of the trade, which was being disgraced by the “deceitful and unworkmanlike wares of various persons.” The act of incorporation specifies the manufacture of “knives, scissors, shears, sickles and other cutlery,” and provides that all persons engaged in the business shall “make the edge of all steel implements manufactured by them of steel, and steel only, and shall strike on their wares such mark, and such only, as should be assigned to them by the officers of the said company.” Notwithstanding these regulations, and the pains and penalties attached to their infringement, the corporation was not very successful in maintaining the high character of Sheffield wares. Most manufacturers made cutlery to the order of their customers, on which the name of the retailer was stamped, and very inferior malleable or cast iron blades went forth to the public with “London made,” “best steel,” and other falsehoods stamped on them to order. The corporate mark and name of a few firms, among which Joseph Rodgers & Sons stand foremost, are a guarantee of the very highest excellence of material and finish; and such firms decline to stamp any name or mark other than their own on their manufactures. In foreign markets, however, the reputation of such firms is much injured by impudent forgeries; and so far was this system of fraud carried that inferior foreign work was forwarded to London to be transhipped and sent abroad ostensibly as English cutlery. To protect the trade against frauds of this class the Trades Mark Act of 1862 was passed chiefly at the instigation of the Sheffield chamber of commerce.