preparations to go and leave my young family for the
winter, at which I could not help feeling very sad, when I accidentally
heard that Mr. Eli Terry was about to fit up his factory (which was
built the year before,) for making his new Patent Shelf Clock. I thought
perhaps I could get a job with him, and started immediately to see Mr.
Terry, and closed a bargain with him at once. I never shall forget the
great good feeling that this bargain gave me. It was a pleasant kind of
business for me, and then I knew I could see my family once a week or
oftener if necessary.

CHAPTER II.

PROGRESS OF CLOCK MAKING.--IMPROVEMENTS BY ELI TERRY AND OTHERS.--SHELF
CLOCK.

At the beginning of this book I have said that I would give to the
public a history of the AMERICAN CLOCK BUSINESS. I am now the oldest man
living that has had much to do with the manufacturing of clocks, and
can, I believe, give a more correct account than any other person. This
great business has grown almost from nothing during my remembrance.
Nearly all of the clocks used in this country are made or have been made
in the small State of Connecticut, and a heavy trade in them is carried
on in foreign countries. The business or manufacture of them has become
so systematized of late that it has brought the prices exceedingly low,
and it has long been the astonishment of the whole world how they could
be made so cheap and yet be good. A gentleman called at my factory a few
years ago, when I was carrying on the business, who said he lived in
London, and had seen my clocks in that city, and declared that he was
perfectly astonished at the price of them, and had often remarked that
if he ever came to this country he would visit the factory and see for
himself. After I had showed him all the different processes it required
to complete a clock, he expressed himself in the strongest terms--he
told me he had traveled a great deal in Europe, and had taken a great
interest in all kinds of manufactures, but had never seen anything equal
to this, and did not believe that there was anything made in the known
world that made as much show, and at the same time was as cheap and
useful as the brass clock which I was then manufacturing.

* * * * *

The man above all others in his day for the wood clock was Eli Terry. He
was born in East Windsor, Conn., in April, 1772, and made a few old
fashioned hang-up clocks in his native place before he was twenty-one
years of age.