Time Telling through the Ages

by Harry Chase Brearley

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.