W-M Corporation
W-M Corporation is a San Francisco iron foundry that operates as a front for a large-scale forgery operation, producing fake pre-war American artifacts for the lucrative Japanese collector market. The factory is owned by Wyndam-Matson, a manipulative and nervous man who regards everyone as a potential enemy, and it is the former workplace of Frank Frink and Ed McCarthy. The corporation's dual nature—legitimate ironwork and illicit forgery—exposes the constructed nature of historicity and the moral compromises of the occupation economy.
Identity and Structure
W-M Corporation's stated legal business consists of turning out wrought-iron staircases, railings, fireplaces, and ornaments for new apartment buildings, all on a mass basis from standard designs. Ostensibly an iron foundry, it maintains another business from which its real profits are derived: using an elaborate variety of tools, materials, and machines, it turns out a constant flow of forgeries of pre-war American artifacts. These forgeries are cautiously but expertly fed into the wholesale art object market, joining genuine objects collected throughout the continent. As in the stamp and coin business, no one can estimate the percentage of forgeries in circulation, and no one—especially the dealers and collectors themselves—wants to. The corporation's owner, Wyndam-Matson, has a weak, shifty, nervous, even ingratiating manner, as if he regards everyone as a potential enemy stronger than himself, yet he is genuinely powerful, owning controlling interests in a variety of enterprises, speculations, and real estate.
Forgery and the Historicity Debate
The factory's forgery operation is central to the novel's exploration of historicity. When Frank Frink quit, there lay half-finished on his bench a Colt revolver of the Frontier period; he had made the molds himself, done the casting, and had been busy hand-smoothing the pieces. There is an unlimited market for small arms of the American Civil War and Frontier period; W-M Corporation can sell all that Frink can turn out. An expert could tell the difference, but the Japanese collectors are not authorities in the proper sense and have no standards or tests by which to judge. As far as anyone knows, it has never occurred to them to ask if the so-called historic art objects for sale on the West Coast are genuine. Wyndam-Matson himself articulates the cynical philosophy behind this trade, arguing that historicity is a mental construct, not a property of objects. He demonstrates this by showing two Zippo lighters, one supposedly from Franklin D. Roosevelt's pocket when he was assassinated, and claims that the only difference is a paper of authenticity. "It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves," he says, tapping his head. "It's in the mind, not the gun." This philosophy justifies his entire business model, which treats authenticity as a commodity to be manufactured rather than discovered.
Key Actions and Consequences
The corporation's forgeries have direct consequences for the characters. When Robert Childan attempts to sell a Colt .44 from W-M Corporation to a man claiming to represent Admiral Harusha, the customer immediately identifies it as a fake, leading to the loss of a fifteen-thousand-dollar sale and a crisis of confidence for Childan. The University of California Penology Department later confirms the gun is a reproduction cast from plastic molds, with serial numbers all wrong and the frame not casehardened by the cyanide process. This incident triggers a chain reaction: Childan confronts his wholesaler Ray Calvin, who in turn calls Wyndam-Matson, leading to the factory owner's suspicion that Frink and McCarthy are behind the exposure. Wyndam-Matson considers paying them off but also contemplates notifying the German consul about Frink's Jewish identity, a threat that could lead to extradition and death. The corporation's forgeries thus not only undermine the market for authentic artifacts but also expose the characters to legal and existential danger.
Development and Significance
W-M Corporation's significance extends beyond its role as a setting. It represents the moral and economic corruption at the heart of the Pacific States of America, where the victors' appetite for American history creates a market for its fabrication. The factory's products—fake Colt revolvers, forged frontier artifacts—are the physical embodiment of the novel's central theme: that history itself is a contested narrative, subject to manipulation by those in power. The corporation's existence also catalyzes the novel's most hopeful development: Frink and McCarthy's decision to leave and start Edfrank Custom Jewelry, producing original contemporary work that, as Paul Kasoura later recognizes, possesses "wu"—a genuine, non-historical value. W-M Corporation thus stands as the negative pole against which the novel's positive vision of authentic creation is defined. The factory's forgeries, however profitable, are ultimately sterile; the new jewelry, however commercially uncertain, represents a living art that the corporation's cynical trade can never produce.
