Christopher and the Clockmakers

by Sara Ware Bassett

"The firm must have got rich," put in Christopher, much interested.

"It didn't," was the prompt contradiction. "On the contrary, after several years of struggle, it failed. The public is fickle, you know, and the novelty of owning a cheap watch wore off. Moreover, the product got a bad name and failed to be taken seriously. It required a great deal of time and energy to wind a watch with such a long spring as this one had, and I must agree that those who made jokes at the expense of the poor Waterbury were well within their rights. Furthermore, the watches had been linked up with inferior commodities and when purchasers found, for example, that they had been gulled on the suit of clothes they acquired with the watch, instead of cursing the clothier they took out their wrath on the watch company. Then, too, the firm, in order to get their wares distributed, had parted with them at so small a margin of profit that nothing was made on them. The entire scheme from beginning to end showed poor generalship. What wonder such an enterprise went down?"

"And is that the end of the story?"

"By no means," retorted the Scotchman. "Far from it. The management took their experience as wise people do and years later began over again, afterward reaping greater success than they had ever known, all of which proves that it never pays to give up."

"Haven't lots of other kinds of cheap watches been made since?"

"Yes. The Ingersoll is one. It is the result of several years' experiment with a dollar watch. At first a thick, clumsy contrivance that wound from the back like a clock was introduced, and from this stepping stone Ingersoll developed a second and third type, each an improvement on the original. Having thereby convinced himself that the dollar watch was not only possible but would sell, he got the Waterbury Company to put out his idea for him; now the Ingersolls have in addition two factories of their own, and the three together average an output of about twenty thousand watches a day. In a country as big as ours, however, the great problem is to get goods known from east to west, and from the north to the south, and this obstacle of distribution was the one the company encountered. How was the country generally to know there was a good dollar watch? Owing to the scant margin of profit on which the watches were sold, it did not pay large retailers to carry them. Neither could they find even standing-room in a shop like your fathers'." With dancing eyes the Scotchman regarded Christopher.

"Moreover," he went on, "although Ingersoll guaranteed his watch, tricky competition arose. Other firms borrowed the name as a label for their own poor goods; some merchants took the Ingersoll watch and ran up the price on it, privately pocketing the profit. To outwit such practices the company not only printed their name on the dials of their watches but they carefully printed the exact price on the boxes in which they were packed. You would have thought this would have forever put at an end any foul play, wouldn't you? But even these precautions were circumvented by sharpers who advertised their wretched wares as marked-down Ingersolls. Thus the company was compelled to fight inch by inch for its rights."

"I'd no idea business was such a mess," ejaculated Christopher. "And what happened to the Ingersoll people finally?"

"Providentially a turn came in their affairs," was the answer. "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, the saying goes. In every calamity lurks some good and for the Ingersoll Company, at least, there was good in the Great War. Again we see a clever manufacturer grasping his opportunity. No one knew better than Ingersoll how costly striking watches were; he also sensed that soldiers who were fighting could not be supplied with endless numbers of watches nor even if they were would they always be where they could show a light. Nevertheless there would be hundreds of men in the trenches and on the battle fields who through long stretches of darkness would wish to know what time it was. Many would be on guard and compelled to remain awake; and many more would be unable to sleep from terror, homesickness, or because they suffered from the various discomforts war brings. What, therefore, could be a greater boon than a cheap watch with an illuminated face? It was to answer this emergency that the Ingersoll Company turned out their Radiolite Watch."

"I suppose the dial had phosphorus on it," rejoined Christopher.