As the company continues to grow, it stands as a symbol of the past, present, and future of American ingenuity. Everyone has their favorite Remingtons. Some people appreciate the antiques, while others trend toward recent guns for practical use. The Big 5 guns represent a snapshot of an era of change for the company. Models 31, , , , and all reflect the changing commercial market and show how Remington adapted to it. The Model 31, a favorite among traditionalists and connoisseurs, represents the old guard—beautiful walnut stock, bluing, and hand-craftsmanship.
The , , , and , however, epitomize the new era of simpler, cost-efficient, yet accurate products that come in a dizzying number of variants. It has been offered in 12, 16, and 20 gauges. Initially, this gun was meant to compete against the Winchester Model It ultimately was phased out by the and discontinued in The Remington Model shotgun is the best-selling gun in Remington history. Introduced in to replace the Model 31, it has been produced in a vast number of variants and is still in production.
Versions have been made for military and law enforcement, as well as for the traditional sporting market. While many variants exist, it also introduced another successful Remington product—the 7mm Remington magnum. Remington produced one million within the first decade.
It even has been dubbed the best-selling autoloading shotgun in history. Like other firearms produced by Remington in the post-war period, the Model was made in a variety of calibers and configurations.
Remingtons are ingrained in the history of the American West, thanks to the notable characters who carried them. He also had a rolling-block rifle given to him personally by one of the Remington sons. And George Armstrong Custer used Remingtons—especially for sport. At the time, there was no better endorsement than that of key personalities more famous than the guns themselves.
We saw this in the 20th century, when exhibition shooter Tom Frye used his Remington Nylon to set an accuracy record in , which was formerly held by Winchester shooter Ad Toepperwein.
Eliphalet Remington II set the tone for his company when he produced the first cast-steel barrel in the United States. He was a trendsetter. As a result, the company became known for its innovation. Remington in the mid to late 19th century was a haven for invention. The company welcomed designers from diverse backgrounds to create new and original products not restricted to firearms.
Witness the typewriters and sewing machines that bore the Remington name over the years. Though blacks, like all Huntsvillians, paid the taxes that supported lucrative incentive packages, they seldom reaped the rewards of the best-paying jobs. This reality was of course not felt by whites, Johnson said.
The Remington factory was housed in a gray building the size of 14 football fields set back behind fencing topped with razor wire. Inside, the building was divided in half, the production line on the left and the administrative and engineering offices on the right, along with a classroom set up by the state agency that provides free worker training for private businesses.
Classes for new hires were held three days a week, every week. Johnson was disappointed but not surprised to learn from his parishioners that on the Remington line, the usual racial divisions manifested.
Most of the line workers were black, whereas most of the managers and engineers were white. Though the company was supposed to be hiring hundreds of people, workers said that the line appeared suspiciously sparse. Johnson, along with the president of the Huntsville N. The organizer arrived in Huntsville in He was born in Birmingham and spent most of his career organizing throughout the South. But another obstacle surprised him. It seemed to Shanklin that in order to prevent unionization, the factory was exchanging its full-time workers for temps, who came and went rapidly, never sticking around long enough to have a stake.
Remington declined to comment for this article. The presence of the temp workers, who were exempt from the minimum average hourly wage in the development agreement, also served as a cautionary tale, a reminder of how much lower you could sink if you raised trouble. Full-time workers, for their part, were often unaware that the tax-incentive package might entitle them to higher wages than they were receiving.
And when they did realize, they were unsure what to do. While I was in Huntsville, Remington employees told me that if they spoke to me for this article, they would be fired. It makes us feel they have something to hide. But we keep our mouths shut. Clock in, clock out. I eventually met a former employee, who asked to be identified by her first initial, D.
She was 43 and divorced and moved to Alabama more than a decade earlier from Michigan, along with her year-old son. After taking her two-week course at A. She was assigned to a boxing station, which was not on an assembly line but at a static counter where the workers stood side by side. The job was boring. She received the guns — they were long guns, for hunting — placed them in boxes, then weighed the boxes on a digital scale.
If the scale displayed a red light, that meant D. After two years, according to paystubs that D. She decided to move into a better apartment in North Huntsville, a two-bedroom with a linoleum square cut out of gray carpeting for a welcome mat. She bought a Dodge Avenger and a Ruger. Then, in , D. After missing several days for a second surgery, she says she was called into the office of her supervisor, told that she had missed too much work and fired, three years to the day after she started.
As the union effort had fizzled, there was no one she could appeal to for help. We were sitting in her apartment last October when her cellphone rang. The fingers of her left hand returned to her right wrist and massaged it. Over the winter, facing several months of back rent and payments on the Dodge, D. One morning she woke up to find her car had been repossessed. Bankruptcy offered the only way out, and she filed her petition three weeks before Christmas. Just before the New Year, she was hired by the private-security firm Securitas.
She was assigned to the Toyota factory. Then she patrolled the parking lot in a company car. After the election, researchers at Cerberus saw an omen in their data. A plunge in NIC checks foreshadows a corresponding plunge in gun sales, which is what happened in the months that followed.
The debt, meanwhile, was racing upward, like a flame licking a fuse. Cerberus has a habit of hiring power brokers from the United States government, many of them prominent Republicans. Snow joined Cerberus seven years later. Almost years later, the internationally-recognized company is poised to open a new firearms production and research and development facility in Huntsville.
Sources told AL. Robert Bentley is expected to join local leaders for an official announcement today at 2 p. Here are some other notable moments in Remington's history:. That firearms plant is still in use today. The partnership and succeeding corporation goes on the develop the first hammerless solid breech repeating shotgun, first hammerless auto-loading shotgun, first successful high-power slide action repeating rifle and first lock breach auto-loading rifle.
M Enfield rifle , a simplified version of the British Pattern , and development of the Pedersen device. Late in the war, the collapse of the Imperial Russian government had a severe impact on Remington finances. Russia had ordered enormous quantities of arms and ammunition, but ran short of money to pay for the orders. They delayed payment, pointing to alleged defects in Remington products. When the Bolsheviks took power in the Russian Revolution , they repudiated the contract entirely. Remington was left with huge stocks of guns and ammunition, and no prospects for payment.
The U. They viewed hunting products as a more stable business which might help them to survive future ups and downs. During the Great Depression, Remington was purchased by the DuPont Corporation, which had made its fortune with improvements to gunpowder.
In , the U. Army became worried about its ammunition capacity, and asked Remington to collaborate in a plan for national expansion. Though the plants belonged to the U. During the s and s, Remington branched out into other products besides guns, with the purchase of Mall Tool Company in In Remington introduced the Model bolt-action rifle.
The rifle became one of Remington's most successful firearms, and quickly lent itself to developments of many sub-variants, including the Remington BDL , Remington PSS for police and law enforcement agencies the rifle, later renamed P, is very popular among law enforcement agencies and the military M24 SWS which was the USA Army standard sniper rifle between — and still serves among other armed forces around the world, such as the IDF.
Other firearms companies designed and manufactured sniper rifles based on the reliable and accurate Remington Model action. In , Remington closed its ammunition plant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, creating a brand-new facility in Lonoke, Arkansas.
This site was chosen as the geographic center of the sporting ammunition market. A year later, Remington built a new clay targets plant in Athens, Georgia. This happened because Remington was millions of dollars in debt and did not report a profit during the years
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