In 1890, ______ was bursting at the seams with growth due to the Gas Boom.

Arcade officials liked what they saw and bought a large tract of land on the city’s southeast side. By 1892, the factory was in business. In addition to files, the plant also manufactured Elk and Dixie bicycles in its early days.

Sometime after the turn of the century, Arcade File was bought out by the Rhode Island-based Nicholson File Co., which elected to keep the ______ plant. Nicholson File had been established during the Civil War and was the industry leader in the quality of file production. It had perfected the machine-cut file and was the largest producer of files and rasps in the world by the mid-1900s. The company early on had begun exporting their products, thereby expanding their business still more.

The ______ plant of Nicholson File manufactured files for the domestic market and its products were shipped all over the United States. In 1952, the company decided to close its Providence, Rhode Island, manufacturing operation and move the operation to Anderson.

They spent $1 million to expand the Anderson plant (making it the largest file making plant in the U.S.) and 300 Rhode Island employees moved to ______. Employment at the plant swelled to 1,000 employees in the early 1960s, making it ______ County’s third largest employer after Delco-Remy and Guide Lamp.

The superior quality of the new Nicholson Files gradually became an acknowledged fact, the antagonism towards machine cut files diminished, and the output of the works slowly increased until over three hundred dozen files a day; were being manufactured. Nicholson Files in a few years had become the standard in America, and hand cut files were a thing of the past.