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THE SOUTHERN WORLD, OCTOBER 1, 1882. CLOCK AND WATCH LAND. The State of Connecticut faces the sun. That is, its surface slopes to the south. Its rivers all run to the southward on their way to the 8ound. This divides the State into a series of parallel valleys. There is the Valley of the Connecticut, of soft and placid beauty; the hill edged Housatonic, and the winding valley of the Naugatuck, or clock land. This, the smallest of the three valleys, is the home of some of the most unique industries of this industrious country. Here have sprung up towns famous for their workers in brass and metals, celebrated for their manu factories of clocks for all the world. Now come watches, a natural outgrowth of the clock-making industry. Here is Water- bury, where it is said that within a radi us of 'twenty miles more clocks are made than in any other place in the world. There is even a hint in the wooded hills of that other watch country—Switzer land. There a hardy and industrious people tend their poor, rough farms in tho summer, and make watches by hand in winter. Here is the same rough and broken country, a poor land for farmers, whose the people make watches by the gross. For the tourist, the Naugatuck is well worth a visit. There are wooded hills, wild glens, and the noisy river, good hotels and llvoly towns, every one a shop. Here are the skilled workers in brass, the rubber men, and the clock and watch men. Their land may be poor, but their hands and brains have made them rich, in spite of the forbidding rocks and stony pastures. The school geographies of a quarter of a century ago used to speak of Trade and Commerce in a flattering way, intended to convey the idea that the exportation of hymn-books and New England rum to the benighted inhabitants of the South Seas was a highly commendable work. “ Commerce introduced civilization among the heathen; trade was a Great Moral benefit to all the nations." The geographers have grown wiser, yet business, in a broader and more hnmane way, does now help all the people. If it is true that regular meals, a comfortable house, and a good suit of clothes are aids to virtue, then the factory, the shop, and mill have other missions besides paying dividends. Fifty years ago a clock was a household it is noon yet?” for he has a good watch in his pocket. Perhaps it is not fair to call a watch a luxury. This generation lives “on time." The railroad has be come the monitor of the people. If you do not know the time of day, if you cannot tell on the instant what hour and moment it is, you are sure to be left out of modern business life. A timepiece of some sort is a positive ne cessity. Only a jeweled watch, timed to split seconds, is a luxury; a good, ser viceable, reliable watch is a necessity— a first requisite in all business and so cial life. The manufacturers of the Naugatuck Valley early saw this want and under, took to meet in by making cheap clocks. Not merely “Cheap John” trickery, but real, steady-going clocks, of honest face and well-regulated character. After that came tho American watches. If machinery could be used to make a clock, then it might be trained to finer and higher work. The Waltham and Elgin watches made it possible for people of moderate means to carry the time in their pockets. The success of American machine made watches has revolutionized the business of making watches the world over. With all this, there was still a wide field unoccupied. There were still multitudes so poor they could not buy a watch. Tiien it was that it occurred to some of these long-sighted man ufacturers of tho Naugatuck Valley that, if To understand this difficult problem you must observe that a watch is simply a means of storing energy. You consume a certain amount of food. It is potential energy, though the poets call it the "staff of life," and that sort of thing. In an hour or more you are able to realize the en ergy as actual work perform ed by your own hand or arm. You spend a trifle of this en ergy in winding up a watch. The watch spring has now be come stored with the energy that directly came from good beef, and originally from the sun that built up the grass the ox fed upon. If the spring wore free to unwind it would give one vigorous twist, and spend the energy in an instant and to no purpose. By tying the spring to a train of wheels it is possible to make the spring spend its en ergy slowly in the work of turning the hands of the watch. It only requires some system of regulation to make the energy you put into the spring in one minute ex tend itself over twenty-four hours. It is wound up quickly. It must run down slowly. Tiie Englishman and the Switzer can do this well, if we give them money enough. Who can doit cheaper than aH? Clearly the American! This narrowed the search, and practically reduced it to New A DESIGNER. . heirloom, only to be bought with much money or inherited from rich parents. To day, no tenement so poor that it has not its mantel clock from the Naugautuck. Fifty years ago only the rich man could wear a watch. To-day, the laboring man need not importune the passing stranger to know “ if a good reliable watch could be made and sold for about three dollars, that it would pay. Now, a thing pays because it meets a human want. Was there a want? Bid the people really wish a cheap watch? The ques tion did not require much discussion. A watch for three dollars would meet a want— it would pay. There are two. ways in which a want is met. The thing is discovered or it is invented. When it is recognized that there was a demand for a three-dollar watch, the usual course of Invention was reversed. The watch was not dis covered, nor was it invented as a whole, or as a single idea that might be made into a practical machine. The first thing that was done was to find a man to tako an order for the watch. Naturally enough the watch-making profession was looked to for the com- _ ing man. A watchmaker or watch re- I) pairer would at least know the difficut- k ties of filling such an order. Ho would know, in a general way, what had been done, or, what was more important, / what could be done. The commission was a strange one. Wanted,—aman who can make a watch that shall have a less number of parts than any watch ever made. Anybody can make a watch if you place no lim it on the material and labor. The En glish watchmaker can make a magnificent watch if you let him put in any number of parts and you are not particular about the cost. The Waltham and Elgin people can make a first-class watch with one hundred and sixty parts, and do most of the work by machinery. The price will be far more rea sonable, but it will, at best, be many times three dollars. THE WASH ROOM. England. At the Centennial Exhibition there was shown the largest steam engine in the world. One day there came a man to the main building with a new engine in his vest pocket. For a house to shelter the motor he had used a sailor’s thimble. It had a boiler, a cylinder, valves, a governor, crank, piston, and shaft, and it would work. Three drops of water filled the boiler, and when steam was up it started off in quite the correct steam-motor style, and stood at work near the greatest engine in the world—its brother, and yet the smallest. The man who could, with a common watch repairer’s tools, design and construct such a machine was the man to make the coming watch. This was Mr. D. A. A. Buck, at that time living in Worcester, Mass. He took the commission and—failed. Then it seemed as if the whole idea was past the doing. A three-dollar watch that was not a toy could not be made. It is not in your true Yankee to give up. Within a year Mr. Buck had in vented, or thought out, and constructed an other watch. It had been found! Here was a real prac tical timepiece, a regular watch, with fewer parts than had ever been seen. The watch had been constructed by hand, every part cut out with ordinary tools. Could it be made by machinery on a large commercial scale? That was the question for the Nau gatuck. In this land of cheap clocks could be found, if anywhere, the men to invent the machinery and make it too, the business men who could see the matter in its com mercial aspects, and here was capital in ex haustless abundance. The histories of com mercial enterprises are often as interesting as the histories of men and nations, there are ups and downs, failures and successes happy discoveries and discouraging delays A REAL WATCH. when it seems as if inanimate things are really totally depraved. This first hand-made watch was shown to Mr. Charles Benedict, of the Benedict and Burnham Manufacturing Company, of Wa- terbury. Thig company owns the largest brass-making plant in the world. They had a large force of skilled workmen and many fine tools for working in brass. The new watch was carefully examined by Mr. Ben edict. It was tested in every imaginable way, and it stood the tests. Mr. Benedict at once saw a gigantic business in the new watch. No need to make a second. The question was now how to make a million just like it. He arranged at once that the work of making watches should begin in their establishment. It wns thought that with the tools already owned by his company, and by the construction of others, that the business of making watches could be started in about six months. It took nearly two years, and over two hundred thousand dollars, to merely make the tools and machinery. The three rooms first taken at the works of the Benedict and Burnham Company soon proved too small. This led to the formation of a stock compa ny and the building of a factory. The company was incorporated under the style of the Waterbury Watch Com pany, with Mr. Charles Benedict for its first President. The Company became the owner of. the patents, for this watch, simple as it is, contains many novel features that are fully protected by patents, both in this country and in most countries where patents can be obtained. The factory was designed by Mr. H. W. Hartwell, of Boston, architect of the watch factories at Waltham, Mass., and Elgin, 111. Though this was to be a low priced watch, it did not follow that the actual plant where it was to be made was to be cheap. The factory was to be the best—as good as would be required to make any watch. So it happened that when the building was furnished complete it was found that nearly a half million of dollars had been expended, and all this to make a watch that.could be sold for less than four MAKING STEEL 8PBINQ8. dollars, or, better still, to make a million of watches, not one of which should cost over three dollars and fifty cents at retail. About May, 1881, manufacturing was com menced in the new factory. that time