A Surviving Saddle Maker Tells His Story
St. Louis Glove-Democrat Sunday Magazine, June 28, 1931
Page 1
John K. Hotze, Whose Father Founded the Business in 1864, Turned to the Manufacture of Golf Bags When the Automobile All but Crowded Riding Gear Into the Discard, but He Still Finds Call for His Favorite Product from Horsemen and Polo Enthusiast.
By a Globe-Democrat Staff Writer
Since the days when a man had to sell saddles by riding one all over the country, running the gantlet of malaria, road agents, rattlesnakes and questionable corn pone cooked with cracklings, the members of the Hotze family have been saddlers. They began back in 1864, when the locomotive was the most stupendous engine of modern civilization and the airplane a ridiculous bubble blown in the fancy of dreamers.
In a five-story building at 219-221 Chestnut street the Hotzes, saddlers, still make their stand. But their horse leather business, which at one time grossed as much as $1,500,000 a year, has dwindled to a comparative pittance. Instead of turning out trim saddles with their smooth lines and heavy service leather, Henry Hotze & Sons have become mainly a manufacturer of golf bags. Thus, the march of the day.
John K. Hotze, president and virtual owner of the business, is one of the last remaining saddle makers in the St. Louis field. All but a few are gone. It is hard now to believe this city was but a relatively few years ago the greatest saddlery distributing center in the United States.
The pioneer of this particular enterprise was Henry Hotze, who came up the Mississippi in 1864 to become one of the best know saddlers in town. Perhaps he would writhe in his grave today if he knew the company he had built to create the finest of horse gears had turned to the manufacture of small bags fitted with knobby do-dads demanded by country club addicts who trot about closely cropped fairways whacking tiny gutta-percha pellets.
Not that the old gentleman wouldn't have done the same thing if he held the reins of the establishment today. But it would probably be a wrench to his stout workman's pride to know his creations in leather, which he had thought works of art, were used now mainly by a coterie of riding-club enthusiasts, dude wranglers and a few remaining cow punchers.