There once was a pipe company in my town ?

[BryGuySC]

Tony,

Thanks for the great find and topic.

W.H. Utter is listed as a Box Maker in 1916, with Mr. WH and another Utter on the board of directors. Perhaps this was their first (main) business?
https://books.google.com/books?
id=Q_BYAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA118&lpg=PA118&dq=wH+Utter+%26 +Sons+history&source=bl&ots=rjeZItoRpD&sig=Uxrp5-7oWjXMxauCRz9NwGCLwjc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4nKTY m9TJAhVIHh4KHfU6BEUQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=wH%20Utte r%20%26%20Sons%20history&f=false

They're listed as a Pipe Maker in the 1949 RTDA. They survived at least this long so you'd think that some would have ended up on eBay.
http://pipepages.com/49rtda18.htm



Inexpensive pipes and I've never seen their brand, ever. @AndyCAYP may be correct that they made pipes under labels for stores (private labels) but the 1949 RTDA registry indicates that they had pipes under their own labels too, even if only a few. They may have made better pipes in 1949 or before but certainly by this time they would have had more productive ways of making the bowls. New York was the pipe capital of the USA in 1949 .

25,000 pipes a day means: 250 pipes a day per employee. 125,000 a week (aal employees andassuming a normal 40 hour work week) and ~6,000,000 a year. There were some companies making pipes in the millions but I think the weekly number was substituted for the daily number (at least).

At 25,000 pipes per week, that would be about 1.2 million a year for the company or 12,000 per employee and 4 pipes an hour (per person). That's plausible. Based on the 1949 prices that would mean a wholesale price about ~.28c / pipe, or $3,360 a year per employee and in that works for the industry, era and salary range. Utter could have made money paying their workers ~$1,000-$1,200 on average. No idea if Utter Pipe business had grown or shrunken between 1915 to 1949.

Savinelli, with more advanced frazing machines takes 20 or so minutes to make a finished pipe (based on their data). My example is 4 pipes an hour, (15 minutes) although I'd like to know how they made the bowls, since that would have been a bottleneck.

No prices on the 1915 pipes and given the machines available, I'd think that my revised estimate is the upper limit and in 1915 it may have been half as much but there's no data, just my conjecture on how they could have made so many bowls.

Pete

I gotta say, Pete, you are an unending fount of knowledge.

[WNYTONY]

I gotta say, Pete, you are an unending fount of knowledge.

I was just waiting for him to chime in - knew he'd know something about it, as he always seems to