Some interesting history where Collins (axe maker) clashed with Ames (shovel maker). It seems that Ames was stamping some shovels "Collins & Co." to take advantage of the Collins trademark. Ames apparently lost the 1909 court case:
In Collins v Ames 18 Fed 561 Justice Blatchford restrained the use by the Ames Company of the trade mark Collins & Co on shovels, notwithstanding that up to that time Collins & Company had made no shovels but were engaged in the manufacture of edge tools. The Court said it appears that the axes and other articles made by the plaintiff and which before that time were known and used in Australia were stamped Collins & Co. Therefore although the shovels made by Ames & Sons under this order and subsequently and stamped Collins & Co and sent to Australia and elsewhere may intrinsically have been of high quality, yet the only object of the defendant in putting the stamp Collins & Co upon them must have been to avail himself of the credit and reputation and market which the plaintiff had established for the articles it made and sold with the stamp Collins & Co upon them. There was no other purpose in this. Clearly those who purchased shovels made by Ames & Sons and stamped Collins & Co would believe that such shovels were made by the plaintiff. This was an unlawful appropriation of the plaintiff's trade mark. It is true that the plaintiff up to that time had made no shovels. It is also true that Ames & Sons and the defendant have built up a business in shovels stamped Collins & Co. But the plaintiff had a right to make shovels and it had made kindred articles of metal and its good name and reputation in its business were wholly connected with the use in its trade of the mark Collins & Co.
from
DECISIONS OF THE COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS, AND OF THE UNITED STATES COURTS, IN PATENT AND TRADE MARK AND COPYRIGHT CASES, 1909 (published 1910)
Interestingly the family did not learn from earlier family greed and poor business ethics...
The Credit Mobilier scandal
Oakes Ames was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts and early became involved in the huge transcontinental railroad project that began during the Civil War, with the Central Pacific building east from Sacramento, California, and the Union Pacific west from Council Bluffs, Iowa. In his book,
Nothing Like it in the World, Stephen E. Ambrose says there was only one steam shovel used along the entire line, meaning that men with picks, shovels, wheelbarrows and horse-drawn plows and scrapers moved the majority of the dirt along the approximately 1,900-mile route.
Most of those picks and shovels were made by the Ames brothers, who were in addition making money from the Credit Mobilier, a construction company organized by the directors of the Union Pacific. This company made huge profits from the construction contracts and most of those profits went to the UP’s directors, among whom were Oakes Ames, president of Credit Mobilier, and his brother Oliver Jr., president of the Union Pacific.
When the Credit Mobilier scandal broke in 1872, the House of Representatives voted to censure Oakes Ames and he died shortly after, some say from shame. His brother Oliver Jr. seems to have retired at about that time and the family business continued under a new generation of Ames men.
From: The Farm Collector,
Ames Shovel Works and the Construction of America
Ames Shovel Works once supplied a massive need in the U.S.
By Sam Moore
November 2014
