clockmakers either started only three or four or else began none
until they received advance orders. If eight or ten good clocks that
would sell for thirty-five or forty dollars apiece were turned out
inside a year, the output was held to be a pretty fair one."

"Nobody could get very rich on that income," came from the lad.

"Not if that rate of production had continued. But it didn't, you see.
After Eli Terry got to making clocks somewhere about 1795 he was clever
enough to carry water from a near-by brook into his shop and supplement
his tools and hand engine with water power. That was a stride ahead of
the old way and opened before him all manner of undreamed-of
possibilities, as a result of which he decided to make clocks on a
tremendous scale. The type of thing he aimed to produce was a
thirty-hour clock with wooden works and a pendulum vibrating seconds;
and he figured that by purchasing more water power and larger buildings
he would be able to make such clocks at the rate of a thousand or more a
year and therefore turn them out for as little as four dollars apiece--a
mad enterprise in that era of limited economic conditions."

"Did the scheme make good?"

"Not to the extent he had hoped," answered McPhearson. "He could, it is
true, make clocks with wooden works much cheaper than with works of
brass; but he did not feel satisfied with them and after the year was up
he abandoned the venture. Hence this variety of clock of the elder Terry
workmanship is rarely to be found. A somewhat crude timepiece it was,
having no dial and only figures painted on the glass at the front of the
case to indicate the hours. Peering through it one could see the works.
But although Eli Terry himself gave up making this style of clock,
others who had caught his idea did not and consequently a good many of
them came into the market. In fact most of Terry's inspirations were
thanklessly snatched up by his contemporaries, for in all his years of
work he took out only one patent."

A protest escaped Christopher's lips.

"Patents were held in no very high esteem in those days," continued
McPhearson. "People did not regard them in the light we do now. You
remember how the old clockmakers of London blocked the path whenever a
member of their craft attempted to secure one. They wished to share the
benefits of everybody's ideas and therefore maintained that all
inventions should be common property. As a rule those who clamored most
loudl