Civil War Rifles and Printing Presses
In 1861, with the start of the Civil War, Mason accepted a contract from the United States Government for the production of 100,000 Springfield model rifles. The company embarked on a large expansion to handle the new contract. However, the War Department eventually decided to cut the contract to only 30,000 rifles.
After the war, the company again focused on producing high-quality textile machinery and locomotives. The factory expanded to more than 10 acres (40,000 m2) near the western end of downtown Taunton.
In 1879, Mason's reputation for quality workmanship let to a contract to manufacture of the Campbell printing press, originally patented and built in Brooklyn, New York.
Read more about this topic: Mason Machine Works
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war, rifles, printing and/or presses:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Children’s liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (b. 1939)
“Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“Oh, God, why do they do this to us? We only wanted to live, you and I. Why should they send us out to fight each other? If we threw away these rifles and these uniforms, you could be my brother.”
—Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959)
“The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“Break up the printing presses and you break up rebellion.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Mayor (Thurston Hall)