German grammar with the natural gender of what is described. However, since the diminutive forms ending in "-chen" or "-lein" are grammatically neuter, there exist several notable counterexamples such as "das Mädchen" ("girl") and "das Fräulein" ("miss"). Thus these are not illogical, whereas "das Weib" (old, regional or anthropological: woman; a cognate of the English "wife") is really an exception. Furthermore, in German, the gender of nouns without natural gender is not predictable. For example, the three common pieces of cutlery all have different genders: "das Messer" ("knife") is neuter, "die Gabel" ("fork") is feminine, and "der Löffel" ("spoon") is masculine. Students
Camillus Cutlery Company knives became too expensive to import. The only solution Kastor saw was to manufacture knives domestically. Eventually, his search led him to Charles Sherwood and his small knife manufacturing business in Camillus. With Adolph Kastor in the driver’s seat, the company started to expand. They bought new machinery, such as steam driven drop forge hammers and fly presses and they adopted new techniques, like using alumina grinding wheels. By 1910, the Camillus Cutlery Company was producing close to a million knives a year and had about 200 employees, many of them German immigrants. The company even built a dormitory to