Content area
Abstract
[Worth Loomis], president of the Hartford Graduate Center and chairman of Colt's board of directors, had been invited to Trinity College last week to talk to a Hartford history class about Sam Colt's gun company and its role in the industrialization of the city. He asked [Lester Harding] to join him to talk about the most recent and traumatic chapters in Colt's 137-year history.
Between World War II and Vietnam, though, Colt's company changed hands three times, finally becoming part of a huge conglomerate that took the name Colt -- Colt Industries. The end of the war took its toll on Colt's business and the company started to look for ways to cut costs.
The weight of Colt's history also holds it down. Can a venerable manufacturing company doing work as labor-intensive as making expensive, high-quality guns survive in New England when it has so many lower-cost competitors in the South and overseas? Can Colt's offer the right products and win back customers lost because they felt ignored under past managements? The question ultimately becomes whether the best intentions, combined with the best efforts, will be enough to save this piece of Hartford's history.