The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, July 1946 - April, 1947 Page: 245
582 p. : ill. (some col.), maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Kerrville Cedar Axe
into fence posts and trucked to various parts of the state and
sold on the market square. The usual price ran from ten to
twenty-five cents a post. Thus, an enterprising contractor
might often make a fair profit, in view of the fact that the
demand for fence posts in recent years has been great.
The cedar-choppers were largely Mexican laborers who re-
ceived from a dollar to two dollars a day. Wartime wages were
considerably higher, however. The contractor furnished the
axes, which he bought in dozen lots. A common complaint
among the cedar-choppers was that the large three to four
pound axe they had to use was entirely too heavy and unsuited
for close-in work that was sometimes necessary to fell a cedar
tree. The handle was too long and the blade of the axe too
short; as much of the cutting had to be done by overhead
strokes, a miss could be disastrous.
The Charles Schreiner Company in Kerrville sold hundreds
of axes each year to the cedar-choppers, ranchers, and farmers.
The manager of the hardware department at that time was
Mr. Henry Weiss," who was conscious of a need for an
axe better suited to the cedar country. But he only sold axes;
he did not make them. One day in 1927, as he was returning in
his buggy from the country, after a business visit to a near-by
ranch, he noticed a hatchet, minus the handle, lying in the
ditch by the side of the road. He stopped his horse and got
out to examine it. He immediately realized why the hatchet
probably had been thrown away-part of the blade had been
broken off. Thinking that he might find some use for it, how-
ever, he tossed it onto the floor of his buggy and rode on into
town. At the first opportunity Weiss took the broken hatchet
to his friend, an old German blacksmith by the name of Frank
Krueger,12 to see whether it could possibly be repaired.
The blacksmith explained to Weiss that the hatchet probably
could be heated and beaten into proper shape in order to correct
the broken edge, but that since it had already been sharpened
so many times, the steel edge had more than likely worn away
through long years of use. But Weiss had taken such a fancy
to the hatchet that he insisted that Krueger try to fix it
"lAfter fifty years of continuous service with the Charles Schreiner Com-
pany, Henry Weiss recently retired and now resides at his old home place
in Kerrville, where he and Mrs. Weiss operate a nursery at their home.
12Frank Krueger operated a blacksmith shop in Kerrville for over fifty
years, and at last account, early in 1945, he was ill and feeble.245
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, July 1946 - April, 1947, periodical, 1947; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101117/m1/290/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.