PAUL AND OTTO CLAUSING
My father Paul and uncle Otto Clausing were born near the end of the 19^th century and grew up on a small farm in very rural Hardin County, Iowa. Otto was three years older than Paul, and showed early evidence of a strong natural mechanical skill. Their parents had a tabletop "grandfather's clock"; in other words a clock with a pendulum. At approximately 11 years of age Otto would take this clock apart when the parents were away. Many children could have done that. The impressive aspect was that Otto would have it back together again before the parents returned. It would be working perfectly, and the parents did not know that Otto had been practicing his mechanical skills.
Time went by. By the early 1920s Otto was a carpenter and lead house builder building expensive homes in Kansas City. Paul was a commercial artist doing artwork for the Monarch Film Company. Paul started working for Monarch in Osage, Iowa. At the time that Paul and Hilda were married (Christmas 1925) the Monarch Company moved to Waterloo, Iowa. Then in 1929 Monarch moved to Kansas City, Missouri. Paul and Otto were back together.
Paul bought a South Bend lathe and put it in the basement, and used it as a hobby machine. After a while he started to think that he could make a better lathe. Then in the Fall of 1929 the stock market crashed, and the great depression started, even so, by 1931 Paul decided that he should get into the lathe business. He was motivated by three factors:

1. He could make a better lathe than South Bend
   
2. He thought that the Monarch Film Company did not have a bright future
   
3. He wanted to be his own boss
   

Paul Clausing at work on his South Bend lathe, 1928.

Early Years of the Clausing Manufacturing Company
There are not any records of the years 1931-1934, so I have depended on my memory of what my parents told me. Paul and Hilda Clausing bought the business and building (Fig. 2) in 1931. I believe that they paid cash, and that most of the money came from money that Hilda had received from her parents when she became 21.
The original factory was only approximately 2000 square feet in area and was equipped with a few light machine tools: lathes, drill presses, and one shaper.
My parents and I moved to Ottumwa in the summer of 1931 into an apartment directly over the "factory." The accommodation was not very nice: it had electricity, cold running water, and a telephone; coal had to be carried up two flights of stairs from the cellar to the apartment for heating and there was no insulation, the apartment was hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
After six months Sears cancelled all orders for the hobby lathes - in the heart of the Great Depression few people could afford such a hobby - and this left the business with little revenue.
Otto moved from Kansas City to Ottumwa in March 1932 to work with his brother Paul. There were times when only Paul and Otto were working in the shop. When business was a little better there were one or two other workers.

1935 - 1939
Hilda started keeping a diary in 1935. From then on her diary entries provide some record of the history of the Clausing Manufacturing Company. Also, my memory of events and people starts to help with these years.
The primary product that was made on a somewhat regular basis at this time was a slide rest (attachment for a lathe). These were sold to a company called Duro; other attachments were also made, but the main business was the slide rests; occasionally a lathe would be sold.
The finances of the business were very precarious. Often there were debts with no money to pay them. When a check was received, it was quickly used to pay the bills. On January 30, 1935 Hilda wrote "Figuring bills. It looks to me we're in pretty deep. I cannot see the way out." Somehow they always found a way.
Neither family lived very high on the hog. Usually there was enough to eat, but sometimes meals were very simple. The simplest that I remember was a meal of a big bowl of rice - but usually it was better than that. Both families lived in substandard housing and their cars were old; Paul had a 1930 Model A Ford and Otto a 1928 Jewett.
In the factory the big event early in this period was the purchase of a planer. It arrived on January 15, 1935 at 6 AM, getting Paul out of bed. I still have a vivid memory of this. It was too big to fit through the front door which had to be removed and the opening enlarged in order to move the planer into the factory. On February 22, 1935 Otto planed the first lathe beds. These lathes were woodturning lathes but sales of them were very small and there was, as yet, no sign of the metal-turning lathes that Paul had set out to make.
On June 8, 1936 the first metal-turning, screw-cutting lathe was shipped. This lathe, which evolved into the Series 100, became the mainstay of the business. (Fig. 3).

During the day Paul and Otto worked in the factory, learning by trial and error how to do manufacturing. As an example they made a pattern for the casting of a lathe bed. When they took it to the foundry it was pointed out to them that it would not work. They learned from such experiences and became good manufacturers. Paul worked in the factory during the day, and did the rest of the business work in the evening, including preparation for advertising. A professional photographer took pictures of the products and Paul would do the touch-up work with an airbrush. Of course, Paul also had to do some business functions during the day as well including talking with bankers and occasionally making sales trips. Paul was steadily learning by experience to be a businessman. Paul did all of the catalog development work, which was then sent out for printing. When the catalogs came, Paul, Hilda, and I sat around the kitchen table to stuff them into envelopes and get them mailed. An early version of the catalog was mailed in January 1936. In 1937 an extension to the factory (Fig. 4) was built. It was completed in six weeks and doubled the space to approximately 4000 square feet.

There is a diary entry for December 3, 1937 that Paul ordered Timken bearings for the lathes. This was a big competitive advantage for the Clausing lathes. The South Bend lathes still used simple sleeve (plain) bearings.
In 1938 they started making a grinder that Otto had designed. The grinder, which had a grinding wheel and on top a horizontal honing stone that rotated, was particularly good for sharpening carving chisels.
In the period through 1938 the production quantities of lathes was still very small. There were also many production problems. The diary entry for August 14, 1938, which was a Sunday, reads: "Paul worked all day. Fitted chuck and thinks finally got first clutch to work." This clutch allowed the lathe spindle to be started and stopped while the motor kept running. It became a permanent feature of this model of lathe.
In late 1938 the casting work was shifted from Clem Leedom's foundry in Ottumwa to the Pella foundry. Some of the Leedom castings had been defective. Perhaps some castings were still obtained from Leedom, but Pella became the primary source. Also, some castings were made in the foundry of the Dexter Company in Fairfield. Dexter made washing machines, but their foundry had excess capacity. I have strong memories of all of these foundries for, if I were not in school, my father would take me with him when he went to visit them. Occasionally my cousin Dale and I made a small contribution: November 5, 1938, "Don and Dale painted castings and played in shop." Slowly during 1939 the business improved. The production problems were overcome, and the orders came a little more frequently.
1939--1941
Many changes occurred during this period; orders became much stronger, another addition was built to the factory and other investors were brought in.
One big change was the expansion of ownership in 1939. Howard Reep, who had been an executive of the Delta Manufacturing Company in Milwaukee before it was sold to Rockwell, came into the business and some other investors provided additional capital.
In September 1939 eleven lathes were shipped - this might have been a new monthly high. An entry for March 13, 1940: "Arlene Eaton helping Howard in office." She was probably the first secretary who worked at the company. Until this time Paul had done all of the correspondence, typing letters himself. Howard Reep was accustomed to having a secretary. Arlene only stayed for a short time, but soon there were several secretaries. Sometime in 1939 or 1940 Ed Allmendinger in New York City became the export distributor for the company; he was very effective and exports came to be a relatively large share of the business.
Meanwhile, different variants of the basic lathe were developed and various lengths of bed offered..
April 4, 1940: "Paul worked in shop trying to help get some lathes out. The first lathe with short bed; he thinks he got it to work OK." Continued