The M1 in the American Rifleman

[Mk VII]

Anyone else recall this piece by George Numrich, which used to appear in the Numrich Arms/GPC catalog?



... In the late '40s Winchester wanted Mel Johnson to go to work for them, and he agreed if they would buy the remains of his company. They did, and in about 1952, Winchester called us and asked if we would be interested in buying all the Johnson parts we had. At this point, one might ask “what's a Johnson?” - there were probably six in the United States … in any event, we bought the parts from Winchester, who needed the space they were taking up so badly, they shipped them to us in their own trucks. About two months after receiving the parts, we got a call from a Canadian firm requesting Johnson parts. The agent came down, inspected the parts, and purchased a huge quantity of them. It took about 18 months to find out why – Cecil Jackson of Winfield Arms had purchased some 16,000 from the Dutch government, shipped them to Canada, and 'sat' on them up there for a year and a half waiting for the next lot of 8,000 to come up. If he had advertised them immediately he would not have been able to purchase the next lot at the quite low prices of the first. In the meantime he needed the parts to get the first lot in order for mail order sales.