Part 31 (1/2)

”And did he have to go down there, too?”

”He did go down. During Jefferson's lifetime he was more than once a guest at Monticello. The clock, however, was not completed until after the President died, and when Willard finally went to put it in place he stayed with Madison who had a home no great distance away.”

”He seemed to make friends wherever his business took him,” remarked Christopher thoughtfully.

”Not only that, but his work made friends for him,” was McPhearson's answer. ”It was so well done that people appreciated its worth and gave him more orders. For fifty years he had charge of the clocks at Harvard University and in 1829 the Corporation awarded him a vote of thanks for his faithful services. It is something of a record to have performed work so satisfactorily for half a century.”

”I'll say it is!”

”In 1837 the United States Government engaged Mr. Willard to make two clocks for the new Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton, one of them to take the place of the Senate clock that was burned and the other to be put in Statuary Hall. In the latter room there was already a very beautiful allegorical clock but it needed new works. Willard was now getting to be an old man and such a commission would have dismayed most elderly persons. But although eighty-five the old clockmaker did not hesitate to fill the order or travel to Was.h.i.+ngton to make sure his handiwork was properly installed. It sometimes seemed as if he must have discovered the fountain of eternal youth. Remember he was seventy-eight when he made the turret clock for the Old State House in Boston. I have heard that for some of this later work he used a hand engine to cut parts afterward finished by hand; and of course as his fame traveled and his business increased, he had apprentices to help him and he was obliged to move into a larger shop. But even at that the miracle of what he did does not lose its l.u.s.ter.

”At length, in 1839, he retired, a hale, respected veteran with a long path of usefulness behind him. Until he was eighty he read without gla.s.ses; and so accurate was his eye that never in all his life did he measure the notchings on a wheel, and yet these free-hand calculations proved to be unfailingly correct. But, alas, human machinery is less long-lived than is artificial, and at the age of ninety-five Simon Willard died.

”'_The old clock is worn out!_' was what he said, and indeed the words were true. For close on to a century eyes, hands, and brain had continuously labored for the well-being of others. Yet the works of a good man follow him and in numberless homes, in public buildings, on church spires, honored monuments to the memory of Simon Willard still survive--monuments far more useful than are inert blocks of marble--monuments that pulse with life and keep hourly before those who look upon them the thought of one who performed for his fellow men a practical and enduring service.”

CHAPTER XVII

THE ROMANCE OF THE WATCH

”I asked Dad last night why he didn't have a Willard clock here in the store instead of the one we've got,” confided Christopher to McPhearson the next morning, ”and he was quite sore about it. He said that in the first place a balcony clock of Willard make would cost a fortune and probably could not be bought, anyway; and then he added that we already had a Jim-dandy clock made by one of the Willard apprentices. I didn't get the chance to ask him what he meant by that.”

”Our clock is a Howard, one of the best makes there is,” McPhearson explained. ”Years ago Edward Howard, the founder of the Howard Clock Company, began clockmaking as a pupil of Aaron Willard, Junior. Howard was a boy of only sixteen at the time, and for five years he studied clocks under this excellent tutelage. Do not imagine, however, that this balcony clock of ours was made by Mr. Howard himself. What your father meant was that built into the background of the Howard Company were the Willard traditions and ideas.”

”Then really Aaron Willard hadn't much to do with our clock,” remarked Christopher, disappointment in his voice.

”Not directly, no. Still you have no cause for complaint on that score.

The Howard clock is a more modern product, that is all. Mr. Howard, like Mr. Willard, left his imprint on both the American clock and watch industries, holding for years a very unique place in their development.

Moreover he founded a great business that now gives to us clocks of almost every design. Many are for the interiors of public buildings such as halls, stores, churches, offices, and railway stations. Others are for towers or steeples. Some have illuminated dials and some are electric watch clocks. Therefore do not waste your tears lamenting that your father does not possess an old Willard balcony clock. It would be an interesting thing to own, I don't deny that; but what you already have is as good a timepiece as can be procured anywhere. No one blushes for a Howard clock or needs to blush. Mr. Howard, along with Willard, deserves great credit for building up this successful business of his, for when he began it he started out all by himself in a little shop not over thirty feet square.”

”It's a wonderful thing to found a big business, isn't it?” reflected Christopher.

”Yes, to set going a flouris.h.i.+ng industry that not only provides bread and b.u.t.ter for hundreds of workmen but also furnishes the public with a well-made commodity that it needs is a great service to civilization,”

said McPhearson. ”Edward Howard, as I told you, had a generous part in doing this, not only in the clock world but also in the realm of watches.”

”How did he connect up with the watches?”

”Well, you see, early America had very few watchmakers,” was the reply.

”There were, it is true, numerous persons who dubbed themselves watchmakers and who, like myself, could repair a watch; but they could not make one. Therefore watchmaking as an industry did not exist in this country. So about 1850 Mr. Aaron Dennison, a Boston watch repairer, conceived the idea of starting such a business. Already he had discussed plans with Edward Howard, and now the two men entered into partners.h.i.+p and after raising considerable capital they constructed a small factory in Roxbury. To fully appreciate the difficulties of their venture, you must keep in mind the fact that previous to this time watchmaking had never been conducted along modern lines. There was no such thing in the world as a factory system where every part of a watch was made beneath one roof. Instead, as I believe I told you, watches were made in different places--the wheels at the home of one man, the springs at that of another, and so on, after which the various parts were a.s.sembled, put together, and adjusted. This was the plan followed in France, England, and Switzerland, and the one which with certain modifications is to a great extent still followed in those countries. And in our own land there was not even as much of a system as that, watches being made on a very small scale by individual workmen. It was this scheme of affairs that Aaron Dennison and Edward Howard determined to change.”

”They took some contract on their hands, I should say.”

”A bigger contract than you realize, son,” the Scotchman answered. ”A bigger one than they fully realized, I guess. It is fortunate we do not see all our obstacles when we set forth on an undertaking, for if we did many an enterprise would be abandoned before it was even begun. These two men, now--in the first place they had no machinery; nor was there any to be bought. Moreover, there was nothing to pattern watch machinery after. It had never been made. So, you see, it was one thing to give a man tools and leave him to achieve with them a specified end, working toward the desired result as he went along; and quite another to invent a brainless device that would mechanically reach the same end.

Numberless difficulties must be overcome. To manufacture watches in quant.i.ty it was imperative that the parts be interchangeable. They must not vary even an infinitesimal degree or the whole delicate organism would be thrown out of adjustment. It was not an industry where hit-or-miss methods could be glossed over; on the contrary, every part of the process must be absolutely accurate. Do you wonder people were skeptical as to the possibility of making such a mad undertaking a success and hesitated about putting money into it?”

”I suppose the public rated it a wildcat scheme,” responded Christopher.

”Yes, it seemed very impractical to business men. When you have to build up a factory system from the machinery itself, you have something gigantic on your hands. And that is the task on which Mr. Dennison and Mr. Howard embarked. I suppose n.o.body will ever appreciate the trials those dauntless pioneers went through. Four years they worked in their Roxbury factory and only had a few hundred watches to show for all their toil. Nevertheless the experience taught them many things and chief among these was the fact that they must have more room. Accordingly in 1854 they put up a new factory at Waltham, Ma.s.sachusetts, and it is this structure, standing to this day, that was the first building of the Waltham Watch factory.”

”So the Waltham Watch factory is the grandfather of all the others, is it?” commented Christopher.