It was a great day with him when he received his first magnificent order from a Southern merchant for twelve wooden clocks at twelve dollars apiece! When they were done, he delivered them himself to his customer, and found it impossible to believe that he should actually receive so vast a sum as a hundred and forty-four dollars. He took the money with a trembling hand, and buttoned it up in his pocket. Then he felt an awful apprehension that some robbers might have heard of his expecting to receive this enormous amount, and would waylay him on the road home.
He worked but too steadily. He used to say that he loved to work as well as he did to eat, and that sometimes he would not go outside of his gate from one Sunday to the next. He soon began to make inventions and improvements. His business rapidly increased, though occasionally he had heavy losses and misfortunes.
His most important contribution to the business of clock-making was his substitution of brass for wood in the cheap clocks. He found that his wooden clocks, when they were transported by sea, were often spoiled by the swelling of the wooden wheels. One night, in a moment of extreme depression during the panic of 1837, the thought darted into his mind,—
"A cheap clock can be made of brass as well as wood!"
It kept him awake nearly all night. He began at once to carry out the idea. It gave an immense development to the business, because brass clocks could be exported to all parts of the world, and the cost of making them was greatly lessened by new machinery. It was Chauncey Jerome who learned how to make a pretty good brass clock for forty cents, and a good one for two dollars; and it was he who began their exportation to foreign lands. Clocks of his making ticked during his lifetime at Jerusalem, Saint Helena, Calcutta, Honolulu, and most of the other ends of the earth.
After making millions of clocks, and acquiring a large fortune, he retired from active business, leaving his splendid manufactory at New Haven to the management of others. They thought they knew more than the old man; they mismanaged the business terribly, and involved him in their own ruin. He was obliged to leave his beautiful home at seventy years of age, and seek employment at weekly wages—he who had given employment to three hundred men at once.
He scorned to be dependent. I saw and talked long with this good old man when he was working upon a salary, at the age of seventy-three, as superintendent of a large clock factory in Chicago. He did not pretend to be indifferent to the change in his position. He felt it acutely. He was proud of the splendid business he had created, and he lamented its destruction. He said it was one of his consolations to know that, in the course of his long life, he had never brought upon others the pains he was then enduring. He bore his misfortunes as a man should, and enjoyed the confidence and esteem of his new associates.