John Wolz

Editor’s Note: As a tribute to the founder of Fastener Industry News, the following are excerpts from Dick Callahan’s 15 years at the helm of FIN. They give a sense of Callahan’s style and the fastener issues of the times.
In the first issue of Fastener Industry News on July 10, 1979, Dick Callahan introduced himself to the fastener industry with a characteristic modesty: “We don’t claim to be experts in this field. We’re reporters. And like any neophyte, we’re going to make mistakes. But we’re quick learners, and we think we’ll have something of real value to contribute to this industry as we mature.”
Callahan knew plenty about the wire and steel industries, and branching out to fasteners was an extension, not starting from scratch. He was confident enough about himself that he could understate his background and tell self-deprecating jokes.
Operating out of his rural Connecticut house with his spouse, Harriet Callahan, as business manager and a staff of three assistants, Callahan published Wire Industry News and the Directory of Wire Companies, in addition to FIN.
“Starting FIN in 1979 was not a great piece of timing on our part,” Callahan once wrote in reference to double-digit inflation and rising unemployment at the time.
The issues of the time included the energy crisis, value-added tax proposals, imports and country-of-origin marking, and inflation that continued well into the 1980s.
During his watch from 1979 to 1994 the fastener industry saw an increase in regional associations, the evolution of the rivalry between the importers and domestic suppliers into a more harmonious relationship, exports from Japan shift to Taiwan, Japanese nameplate automakers start buying U.S. fasteners, the fall and the rise again of the U.S. fastener manufacturers, quality assurance accreditation, bar coding, Just-in-Time delivery, consolidations, and growing numbers of women in the industry.
Callahan was known for such folksy FINheadlines as: “It’s getting tough to make a buck – or just break even – in the fastener industry these days.”
He was at times even irreverent. In 1983 he introduced an article: “The management of Russell, Burdsall & Ward Corp., Mentor, OH, will be involved in a strip tease act in the near future. However, the clothes they’ll be shedding won’t be those on their backs but the line of ladies’ and children’s apparel sold through RB&W’s chain of some 80 Mangel specialty shops throughout the Southeast and parts of the Midwest.
“But that’s not all that RB&W is tossing off. It has sold its big (440,000 sq. ft.) manufacturing operations (employing 175 workers) in Mentor, OH for about $4.6 million and is moving manufacturing from there to a smaller (150,000 sq ft) facility in nearby Cleveland … ”
Callahan encouraged the industry to unite. In 1983 he reported on 10 fastener associations meeting in New York and he declared that “the fastener industry may at last have found its ‘voice’ – a big, booming baritone capable of raising the rafters, making itself heard in the business arena, in its relations with local, state and federal agencies, and in other areas where its interests are concerned.”
Excerpts from each of Callahan’s years at FIN:
1979: “The proposal to remove bolts, nuts and rivets from the ‘J’ list – the list of imported products currently exempt from country-of-origin marking requirements – has not exactly been greeted with wild enthusiasm.”
1980: “The Internal Revenue Service bars you from writing down excess inventory at below cost, but go ahead and do it anyway.” After explaining the system, Callahan suggested those using the advice cite Alexander Grant & Company as the source, “and not FIN.”
1981: “The U.S. government has recommended reducing the surcharge imposed on Japanese fasteners from 4% to 2.7%,” FIN reported early in the year. By late 1981 the continuing saga evolved to, “Some people are making an effort to reverse the narrow decision by the International Trade Commission to drop tariffs on fasteners.”
1982: “A nut and bolt maker in Detroit is expanding. Not only that, but business has been good and it thinks it is in the right place at the right time. And, yes, it is involved with automotive.”
1983: Callahan welcomed 1983 with the following introduction: “Now that 1982 has skulked off stage trailing a dismal record of non-accomplishments behind it, it’s time to look at the new year and see if it shows more promise than its predecessor.” In mid-1983 Callahan heralded an increase in auto sales that would extend to the fastener industry: “What’s that strange sound? We heard it about five years ago, but we’re not quite sure – wait a minute, now we recognize it – it’s good news … and it’s coming from the direction of Detroit!”
1984: “The Forbes magazine listing of the 400 richest individuals in this country has been published and, sad to say, nobody in the fastener industry was on it.”
1985: “Wow, this is beginning to resemble one of those Rocky movies where Rocky gets pummeled around the ring, staggers to his corner seemingly out of steam, then comes roaring back throwing punches like a windmill out of control,” Callahan wrote of the U.S. fastener industry. “Now we’re seeing new companies entering the fastener manufacturing field.”
1986: “God’s in his heaven, the stock market’s heading in that direction, interest rates and oil prices are down, the yen is up, the housing market’s booming, and Cleveland State is in the NCAA tournament. Not too shabby a scenario.” Later in the year he found a different scenario: “Oh those hazy, lazy days of summer when the corn is as high as an elephant’s thigh –and sales in the fastener field are as low as a grasshopper’s eye.” 1987: Callahan had warned that “some people could be headed for the slammer … or certainly should be if the ends of justice are to be served, as the result of the chilling revelations that came out of some recent congressional hearings in Washington DC.”
The U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee had just conducted a hearing on “the threat to the American public from counterfeit, mismarked, and substandard fasteners, most of them imported, which have been sold by unscrupulous individuals and/or companies with the full knowledge that they were unfit for their end uses, including installations where their failure could be life threatening.”
In introducing his article on the House examination, Callahan said the story “may, and should, disgust you. End of sermon.”
1988: Referring to the 1987 stock market’s “Black Monday,” Callahan noted that FIN had predicted that “the fastener industry would not suffer too much from the stock market’s free fall and that year-end results would show this.” The year-end FIN Survey “substantiates what we predicted.” Also, fastener companies earnings reports are “reporting higher, if not record high, earnings and revenue figures.”
1989: “The federal government, which has done so much for the domestic fastener industry in the past … like protecting it against foreign dumping back in those jolly days in the early 1980s when fastener plants were closing at a one-a-month rate, is training its eyes on (as opposed to showing its back to) the fastener industry. The FTC, relying on the expertise of a former postage rate commissioner, who’s now chairman of the FTC, is holding up Textron’s acquisition of Avdel PLC of England while it decides if some antitrust regulations have been violated.”
1990: “Unless you’re Elizabeth Taylor … which we assuredly ain’t, it’s probably not a good idea to take on Malcomb Forbes. In this issue of FIN there’s a piece which questions the veracity of a recent Forbes article about a company in the fastener field. The company in question told us a number of things which puts them in a better light than the Forbes piece does.”
The story was about Philadelphia-based Cedar Group, parent company of MSW International.
H.R. 3000 was advancing through Congress that year, and Callahan noted that “as the bill approaches its final form, the decibel levels of the discussions are moving markedly higher.”
“Have you ever had the experience … of reading an obituary of someone whom you thought had passed on years ago? We have sort of the same feeling about H.R. 3000, the Fastener Quality Assurance Act. It’s been with us in its various permutations so long that we sometimes have to remind ourselves that we’re looking at pending legislation (a two-year pregnancy) rather than one hoary with age.” (P.L. 101-592,. the Fastener Quality Act, was signed into law by then-president George H.W. Bush in November 1990).
1991: “On your mark … get set … whoa. What’s the rush? It now appears that P.L. 101-592, in the shadows of whose proscriptions the fastener industry will have to carry on its future business, isn’t as close to going into effect as its schedule called for,” turned out to be a prophetic statement after a 1991 Fastener Advisory Committee meeting (the law was amended three times before finally being implemented in 1999).
1992: “This could be the most important issue of any fastener publication to cross your desk in a long time,” Callahan said of a special issue devoted entirely to the Fastener Advisory Committee’s meeting and letter to Congress calling for amendments to the law.
1993: The Fastener Quality Act again dominated FIN through the year. Callahan minced no words when the Walker Amendment appeared to be languishing: “However, standing in the way of this happening is Michigan Congressman John Dingell, representing the Detroit area, who heads up the Committee on Energy & Commerce, who, while managing to ignore the 50,000 deaths caused by autos each year in the U.S., gets apoplectic about a danger to the populace (our opinion) that ranks, in number of fatalities, up there along with, say, skate board accidents and bathtub mishaps.”
1994: Callahan bowed out as editor with the February 28, 1994, issue. Though he was the founder, editor and publisher, he proudly referred to himself as “this reporter, who started with FINback in 1979 …” Among topics in his final issue were the impending Senate debate of the Fastener Quality Act and the filing of two indictments and six criminal reports from an undercover criminal investigation into the military fastener and fitting industry. After recent hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, fires and business-stopping cold weather in North America, there was an article on “Surviving a Catastrophe.”
The Rumor Mill
Readers loved and hated – or loved to hate – Callahan’s ways of reporting what companies didn’t admit to, which included such phrases as “reports circulating in Columbus” or “there were also strong reports that” used to inform readers when companies wouldn’t confirm news that Callahan was reasonably sure of.
“: can’t name the purchaser, but one serious negotiator, and one which fits the description, provided us … ”
Callahan’s rumors were usually correct. He enjoyed an “I told you so” in 1981 when Lamson & Sessions finally announced it would sell a portion of its industrial fastener division to Russell, Burdsall & Ward Corp. Callahan added, “This announcement confirms FIN’s statement in our December 21, 1980, issue … “
In 1993 Callahan offered a disclaimer to an issue: “We think most of the stuff you’ll read here is pretty accurate but, as usual, we’ll let you know when we’re not sure about the veracity of what we’re reporting.”
Callahan was perfectly willing to tell a joke on himself, and he rated his funny introductions as “corn” rather than “humor.”
Once, when FIN was late getting to the printer because of a winter storm,
Callahan’s introduction said readers might find the issue “more of a snow job than usual.”

Callahan was proud of FIN’s independence. The newsletter serves a wide base of subscribers, not a few key advertisers or other businesses owned by the publisher. Callahan once noted that since FIN has no stake in any fastener trade show it can report independently on all of them.
And he occasionally did take those independent shots. After Callahan, who once ran for Congress against then Rep. Ed Koch of New York, groused in one issue about Sen. Lowell Weicker being the guest speaker at a fastener expo. The show manager sent one of many infamous complaint letters and threatened to end a barter arrangement with FIN.
Callahan was characteristically unfazed. “I am not in the least concerned with what you think about the comments we offered about Sen. Weicker,” Callahan responded in FIN. Callahan went on to blast back, suggesting the use of a dictionary before the show promoter writes such big words as “officiousness” and pointing out the hypocrisy of a letter demanding FIN not criticize the show while the promoter sent copies to the news media. “By some sort of distorted logic it is apparently our duty to keep our yap shut about your speaker but not necessary for you to do the same about what you think of us,” Callahan retorted.
In 1987 Callahan may have described himself best when he listed “the qualities which carry the Callahan stamp” as: “forthrightness, a semi-regard for reality, a vigorous and sometimes offensive writing style, and the sneaky ability to avoid most of the consequences of occasional solecisms.”\ ©2001 FastenerNews.com