One of those mental marvels who can play fifteen simultaneous games of chess, blindfolded, might be able to form a complete idea of the American watch-making industry in the years that followed the Civil War; all that the ordinary mind can gain is a bewildering impression of change and confusion, with companies springing up, and merging or disappearing, all over the industrial map. Inventions were as thick as blackberries in August and, to investors, as thorny as their stems. Countless revolutionary ideas in watch-making revolved briefly—few evolved, and capitalists, large and small, learned the sobering lessons of experience, as capitalists ever have and ever will.

With it all, certain points seem to stand out as clearly defined—among them the fact that watch-production appealed strongly to the public mind at a time when the nation, galvanized into intense activity by the great conflict, was entering an era of extraordinary self-organization. This is, of course, significant. The nation's time as well as its forests, mines, and other resources, must be a factor in the growth of public wealth, and this could not be unless it were widely and accurately measured, which, in turn, implied the universal use of the watch.

The later history of American watch-making is, therefore, a story of the formation of many companies, the failure of most, and survival in the case of comparatively few. In the sense of being founded by men whose experience had been gained at Waltham, the Waltham Company was more or less the parent of the majority. Of the failures, it may roughly and broadly be stated that the general trouble was most often a lack of cooperation between technical watch-making skill and business management.

Of the occasional successes due, on the other hand, to perfect harmony between these two factors, the Elgin National Watch Company, established at Elgin, Illinois, in 1864, was one of the first. Its officials and promoters were not watchmakers but business men—a group of Western capitalists who organized the company at the suggestion of a few trained men from Waltham, to whose technical experience and knowledge they gave entire liberty of action from the first. This combination of Western enterprise and Eastern mechanical skill was a great and immediate success. Within six years from its incorporation, the Elgin Company had built its factory, designed and made its own machinery, and marketed forty-two thousand watches. It is said to be the only American watch company which has paid dividends from the beginning. And yet this achievement cannot be traced to anything strikingly distinctive either in the policy or in the product. It was a case of doing rapidly and easily, with vast previous experience to build upon, what the parent company had so long strived to accomplish, and of doing this honestly and well. In a small way, it was like the rapid growth of democratic principles in America, having, as it were, the British commonwealth of a thousand years on which to base itself.

The period of the development of American watch-making was also the period of the rapid and enormous expansion of railroads. The two were naturally related, in that railroading demands the constant use of a great number of watches, while its progress in punctuality and speed is in direct proportion to the supply of reliable timekeepers. Precision is here the great essential; every passenger must have the means of being on hand in time in order not to miss his train. But what is of far greater importance, railroad men must know and keep the exact time not alone for their own protection but in order that they may protect and safeguard the lives of those who are entrusted to their care.

Most of our great inventions and improvements can be traced to some pressing human need. Many of them, unfortunately, are delayed until some great catastrophe shows the need. It required a disastrous wreck to bring home to the railroads and make clear the necessity for absolute accuracy in the timepieces of their employees.

In the year 1891 two trains on the Lake Shore Railroad met in head-on collision near Kipton, Ohio, killing the two engineers and several railway mail-clerks. In the investigation which followed, it was disclosed that the watches of the engineers differed by four minutes. The watch which was at fault had always been accurate and so its owner took it for granted that it always would be. But tiny particles of dust and soot find ways of seeping into the most carefully protected works of a watch, and every watch should be examined and cleaned occasionally. So it was with the engineer's watch. A speck of coal dust, perhaps, had caused his watch to stop for a few minutes and then the jolting of the engine had probably started it running again. That little speck of dust and those few lost minutes cost human lives.

This wreck occurred not many miles from Cleveland, Ohio, then and now the home of Webb C. Ball, a jeweler, who as a watch expert, was a witness in the investigation which followed. His interest thus aroused, he worked out a plan which provided for a rigid and continuous system of railroad watch inspection. The plan which he then proposed is now in operation on practically every railroad in the country.

A railroad watch must keep accurate time within thirty seconds a week, and is likely to be condemned if its variation exceeds that amount in a month; it must conform to certain specifications of design and workmanship which are only put into movements of a fairly high grade. And the railroad man must provide himself with such a timepiece and maintain it in proper condition, subject to frequent and regular inspection by the railroad's official inspector. There is thus a compulsory demand for watches of a definite quality and performance at a reasonable price.

Expressly to meet this, the Hamilton Watch Company, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was organized in 1892, the year after the wreck which started this reform. This company therefore represents an enterprise founded for a specific purpose and concentrating upon a certain specialized demand, although this does not mean that it is the only company which caters to the needs of the railroad man. All of the great companies produce timekeepers of the highest precision for railroad use, but the Hamilton Company has devoted itself more particularly to supplying this one field.

The Gruen Watch Company, of Cincinnati, Ohio, is typical of still another line of endeavor—the beautifying and refining of watch-cases and watch-works. Its founder, Dietrich Gruen, was a Swiss master watchmaker. He came to America, as a young man, in 1876, married here, and established the international industry which bears his name. It might be said that his watch is not an American product, as the Gruen movements are made at Madre-Biel, in Switzerland, and then sent over to America to be cased, adjusted, and marketed. Perhaps the most notable contribution of this company to the watchmaking industry was to inaugurate the modern thin type of watch. This was evolved by Frederick, the son of Dietrich Gruen, and was made possible by the inverting of the third wheel of the watch, so that the whole train runs in much less space than was previously required.

These four companies are by no means the only successful ones, but they do typify the general trend of development of the American watch industry from 1850 until near the end of the nineteenth century, when a new and even greater era in the history of timekeeping was inaugurated. The story of this development will be considered in later chapters. In the period then closed, however, the ideal of Dennison and Howard, which most people then regarded as an impossibility, was realized to a degree which they themselves would never have thought possible. Dennison died in 1898 and Howard in 1904.

Although watch-making is the creation of European genius and was rooted in European experience, with boundless capital at its command and carried on in communities trained for generations in the craft, it is in this country that it has been brought to its fullest modern development. The census figures, while incomplete and somewhat misleading, are expressive of the amount of growth and of its nature. According to these figures there were in 1869 thirty-seven watch companies in the United States, employing eighteen hundred and sixteen wage earners, or an average of less than fifty workmen; and their combined product was valued at less than three million dollars. In 1914, the last normal year before the Great War, there were but fifteen such companies; the law of the survival of the fittest had been operating. But these fifteen employed an average of over eight hundred people, or twelve thousand three hundred and ninety in all, and the combined value of their product was stated as over fourteen million dollars. These figures are far below reality in that they do not include the large volume of watches produced in clock factories.

American watch-making is typical of the difference between the American and European industry in the nineteenth century. Here a complete watch is produced in one factory, while in England, Switzerland and France most establishments specialize in the manufacture of particular parts and these parts are then assembled in other factories. Some fifty different trades there are working separately to produce the parts. And the manufacturer, whose work is chiefly that of finishing and assembling, takes a large profit for inspection and for the prestige of his name.

By the American system, a thousand watches are produced proportionately more cheaply than a dozen; and a thousand of uniform model more cheaply than a like number of various sizes and designs. Automatic machines tend to economy of labor and uniformity of excellence. The saving begins with the cost of material and ends with the ease and quickness of repairs due to the standardization of parts.

Lord Grimthorpe said: "There can be no doubt that this is the best as well as the cheapest way of making machines which require precision. Although labor is dearer in America than here, their machinery enables them to undersell English watches of the same quality."

It now remained for American ingenuity and enterprise to level the ramparts of special privilege in the world of time-telling by producing an accurate and practical watch in sufficient quantity and at a price so low as to place it within the reach of all.