CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"_The Watch That Wound Forever_"

The most important development in any affair is naturally the one which concerns the greatest number of people. In the United States, it is the people who count and nothing can be considered wholly American which does not concern the mass of the population. We have already seen how watch-movements were brought to a high degree of accuracy, and have followed some of the steps by which the industry was developed in the United States, but there remained one great step to be taken, and that was the putting of an accurate watch within the financial reach of almost every person. The way in which this was brought about was thoroughly American.

In 1875, Jason R. Hopkins, of Washington, D. C., after many months of patient labor, perfected the model of a watch which he thought could be constructed in quantities for fifty cents each. He secured a patent on his model, and with Edward A. Locke, of Boston, and W. D. Colt, of Washington, sought to interest the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company, of Waterbury, Connecticut, in its manufacture.

Failing in this, Locke abandoned further effort so far as the Hopkins' model was concerned. Hopkins, however, continued, and finally succeeded in enlisting the active support and financial resources of W. B. Fowle, a gentleman of wealth and leisure, who owned a fine estate at Auburndale, Massachusetts. This led to the formation of the Auburndale Watch Company. Within a few years, Fowle had sunk his entire fortune of more than $250,000 in the enterprise, and the Hopkins watch had proved a complete failure. In 1883 both Fowle and the Watch Company made assignments.

There are many who still remember the great Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the declaration of American Independence. Those who were there may recall the interesting exhibit of a huge steam-engine—at least, it seemed huge at that time—and, in a glass case near by, a tiny engine—so tiny that it could be completely covered by a small thimble. This midget steam engine, with its boiler, governor, and pumps, was just as complete in all of its parts as was the big engine. Three drops of water would fill its boiler. It was a striking example of mechanical skill and fineness of workmanship, for it had been made under a watchmaker's microscope with jeweler's tools.

The most interesting thing about this little engine was that, unknown to its designer, it heralded the dawn of Democracy in the Kingdom of Time-telling, just as it then was helping to celebrate the birth of American freedom. In the spring of 1877, Edward A. Locke, of Boston, who two years before, as we have seen, had been interested in the Hopkins' watch, visited the neighboring city of Worcester, and while strolling along the main street, in a leisurely manner, he chanced to glance in the window of a watch-repairer's shop. There he saw the tiny engine which had excited so much wonder and admiration at the Philadelphia exposition the year before.

For many months, Locke and his friend George Merritt, of Brooklyn, New York, had been thinking and dreaming of the possibility of supplying the long-felt and rapidly-growing need for a low-priced watch—a pocket-timepiece that could be sold for three or four dollars. The cheapest watch in America at that time cost ten or twelve. They had searched in vain for a watchmaker who was ingenious or courageous enough, or both, to attempt the making of such a timepiece.

Fascinated by the marvelous little engine, Locke stepped into the shop and spoke to the lone workman at the bench near the window. This obscure and humble watch repairer was D. A. A. Buck, the proprietor of the shop and designer of the engine, who was soon to gain renown as the inventor of the famous Waterbury watch.

For the sum of one hundred dollars Buck agreed to study the problem, and, if possible, design for Locke a watch which would meet his requirements. Day and night, for many weeks, he labored at this task, and finally submitted a model. It was not satisfactory.

Worn by his labors and disappointed by his failure, he fell ill. Some days later, Mrs. Buck sought out Locke and joyfully told him that her husband had worked out a new design which he believed would correct the defects of the former model and that, as soon as he recovered, he would begin work upon it. Within a few months he had completed a second model. This time he was successful.

Then began the struggle of Locke and his associates to interest capital in the new enterprise. Most of the preliminary funds and factory space were provided by the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company, a brass manufacturing concern at Waterbury, Connecticut, and the predecessor of the present Waterbury Clock Company. Thus the new watch came to be known as the _Waterbury_.

Within the next twenty-eight months many thousands of dollars had been raised and expended before a single watch could be turned out for sale. It was not until 1880 that the Waterbury Watch Company was finally incorporated and ready for business. Then the factory proudly produced its first thousand watches. They were perfectly good-looking watches, but they had one important weakness—they would not run, because, as it was found, the sheets of brass used in stamping out the wheels had an unfortunate grain, and the wheels would not remain true. Another thousand were made with this defect corrected. This time most of the watches would keep time, but there still was a large percentage of "stoppers." After more study, experiment, and expense, the product was improved until only about ten per cent of the watches refused to run, and the Waterbury watch was really on the market.

It was a wonderfully simple piece of mechanism, very different from the ordinary watch. The whole works turned round inside of the case once every hour, carrying the hour-hand with them. The mainspring was coiled round the outside of the movement, so that the case formed a barrel, and was wound by the stem. It had the old duplex escapement of the days of Tompion and the dial was printed on paper, covered with celluloid and glued to the plate. It had only fifty-eight parts, kept time surprisingly well, was not much to look at, but was sold at the then unheard-of low price of four dollars.

It was put on the market with real Yankee ingenuity. Some of us remember when Waterbury watches were given away with suits of clothes, and the pride with which, as youngsters, we exhibited our first watches thus obtained to our playmates who were less fortunate. The nine-foot mainspring required unlimited winding, which was one of its chief joys, and our friends often solicited the privilege of helping in the operation. Some of the more ingenious among us held the corrugated stem against the side of a fence and made the watch wind itself by running along the fence's length, while other children looked on enviously.

In spite of the disadvantage of the time necessary for winding, perhaps in part because of it, the Waterbury watch became famous the world over and reached a very large sale for its day. It was more or less of a freak contrivance. People spoke of it with a smile. Minstrels opened their performances by saying, "We come from Waterbury, the land of eternal spring"; and there is a story of a Waterbury owner in a sleeping-car, winding until his arm ached and then passing it to a total stranger, saying, "Here, you wind this for a while," with the result that the stranger placed a large order for Waterbury watches to be sold by his agency in China.

At the time that the Waterbury watch was well established, the world had advanced to a point fairly approximating the life of to-day. All the marvels of invention which had lifted so much of the earth's manual labor from the shoulders of mankind and which had been expected to shorten working-hours and to cheapen products until the standards of living of all classes would be raised through the possession of beneficial products inexpensively produced—these had gone far toward establishing the factory system. Machinery had come into vogue in place of hand labor. The steam-engine, the sewing-machine, the railway, the steamboat, the cotton-gin, the threshing-machine and the harvester, were indispensable aids. Photography and typewriting were novelties no longer, and the phonograph was becoming familiar. Electricity had taken its place as one of man's most valuable servants, able to transmit his messages, furnish him with power, and turn his night into day. These are but a few of the countless improvements that had contributed to the rapid rise of this country as a manufacturing nation instead of one chiefly agricultural.

Millions had already found employment in the factories, the transportation systems, and other collective-labor establishments. Schools had multiplied throughout the country. Trains, for the most part, were run on schedule time. Business offices, accompanying the development of the great industrial concerns, employed thousands. The department store was beginning to appear. Public-utility organizations and government departments were growing complex and extensive.

Thus, in every direction a stirring impetus was being given toward those intricate modern conditions which depend upon the watch. The lives of nearly all people were beginning to be touched by affairs that demanded common punctuality a number of times every day—the hour of opening factory, school, office or store, the keeping of appointments, the closing of banks and of mails, and the departure of trains. The times were bursting with need for a closer watch on time. From the industrial president to the common laborer and school-child the pressure of modern life, with its demand for punctuality, was making itself increasingly felt.

Yet, strangely enough, watches were still regarded as luxuries. It was not yet realized that they belonged among the implements which the daily life required of all. The notion still held that the watch was the mark of the aristocrat—a piece of jewelry rather than an article of utility, a thing more for display than for use. And the prices of good watches, according to the standards of the day, were such as to perpetuate the idea.

It is no wonder then that, in spite of its crude characteristics, the low-priced Waterbury watch attained a considerable sale. A watch was a novelty, an uncommon possession among average people, and anything approximating a real watch was assured of a large sale if within reach of the ordinary purse. Therefore, the commercial failure of the Waterbury Watch Company involves something more than a mere business failure. Here is something which textbook economists may well undertake to explain, since the article was good, the need unsupplied, the competition feeble, and the profit satisfactory. The Waterbury watch enjoyed an initial success but, in spite of satisfactory quality, its sale gradually fell away, until, notwithstanding several refinancings and changes of management, undeserved failure ultimately overtook the first low-priced watch-venture. It was not the manufacturing problems, such as had overcome Howard and had sorely tried Dennison, but the problems of distribution which were the undoing of the Waterbury Company, and here the importance and power of the middleman stand out in an instructive way.

The conditions of the age demanded a cheap watch. Things to come could not eventuate except through the ability of everyone to measure his minutes. Almost from its first announcement, the Waterbury sprang into demand, but later succumbed to false policies of sales. Eagerness for the large and easy orders, which were momentarily attractive but finally fatal, spelled ruin.

When first put out, the watch was sold through stores at a very moderate price and proved to be such a sensation that it suggested itself to ingenious merchants as a trade-bringer when offered as a premium with other goods.

Sam Lloyd, the famous puzzle-man, was among those who saw this possibility and he devised a scheme which resulted in the giving-away of hundreds of thousands of Waterburys; it consisted of puzzles printed on cards. These puzzles were so simple and yet so cleverly designed that while anyone could solve them, each thought himself a genius for his success in doing so. Lloyd's idea was to take his puzzles to clothing stores all over the country and sell them with watches, in order that those dealers might distribute the puzzles all over town, together with an announcement of a guessing-contest. Each successful contestant, upon return of the puzzle with its solution, was privileged to buy a suit of clothes and get a Waterbury watch with it free of charge.

Such was the magic of a watch in those days that the Waterbury boomed the business of hundreds of clothiers, who, as in nearly all something-for-nothing schemes, were careful to add more than the cost of the watch to the price of the suit. Nevertheless the idea took so well that Lloyd spread it into Europe, China, and other parts of the world. Thus, the Waterbury watch became a familiar object in many lands. Adaptations of the scheme, applied to other wares, were carried out by him and by others until giveaway propositions became the main channel of distribution for these watches. For a time, such methods flourished and the regular trade of ordinary watch-dealers correspondingly languished. But, finally, the scheme-idea lost its novelty and pulling power. People would not forever buy clothes in order to get watches. In the process, the Waterbury name had become a byword for tricks in all trades. Shoddy clothes at all-wool prices had become associated with it in people's minds. They stopped buying these watches in ordinary stores because others "gave" them away. Regular dealers cut the prices to get rid of their stocks, and this led to further demoralization because customers never knew whether or not they were buying at the bottom price. Dealers could make no money on them under such market conditions and, because of this and of their shady association with give-away deals, the Waterbury name became a stench in the nostrils of the legitimate trade.

Thus, when the scheme-trade died away and the company again turned its attention to the watch-dealers whom it had forgotten in the flush of its easy success, it found no welcome. It had forsaken its source of steady customers and was now forsaken in return. After floundering about in several further reversals of trade policy and causing the loss of further investment for its backers, the Waterbury name was abandoned and the company reorganized as the New England Watch Company. As such it ventured into new fields of watch manufacture and offered an elaborate variety of small and fancy watches and cases, and numerous models, sizes, and styles of movements sold on vacillating marketing policies. Never did it attain a genuinely sound footing, however, for it vacated its field of fundamental and distinctive usefulness, viz., the production of a reliable, low-priced, simple watch, to meet the advancing requirements of its day; it had gone back to the view-point of the watch as an ostentatious or ornamental bit of vanity. Hence the old Waterbury business was compelled to close its doors, and in the fall of 1914, the first year of the Great War, was bought out at a receiver's sale by a firm who had replaced it in the field of supplying watches for the masses. This firm rededicated the organization to its original mission, modernized its mechanical equipment, and revived the Waterbury name after a lapse of twenty years, until to-day, through the employment of judicious sales-methods, the factory is more successful than ever it was in its earlier days.