firm,
proved to be anything but a success. Some difficulty with the brass used
prevented their running properly."

One would have thought, to hear Christopher's sympathetic exclamation,
that all his earnings had been invested in the unlucky enterprise.

"The second thousand were better," went on the Scotchman, "but still
they did not go well; this meant more money to improve the machinery
and still more delay in putting the goods on the market. Then at length
after the watches had been doctored until only a small percentage of
them stopped they were offered for sale."

"Did people buy them?"

"If they didn't it was not the fault of the Company," chuckled
McPhearson. "Certainly every inducement was held out to purchasers. Not
only was the price of four dollars within reach of the most meager
purse, but the watches were dangled as bait before the eyes of all sorts
of covetous bargain hunters. Sometimes you were coaxed into buying a
suit of clothes to get one; sometimes one came with a big order of
groceries or maybe as a premium for selling soap. Not infrequently they
were awarded as prizes for subscriptions to magazines. They were so
hawked about that the whole country heard of them and quantities of them
were sold."

"The firm must have got rich," put in Christopher, much interested.

"It didn't," was the prompt contradiction. "On the contrary, after
several years of struggle, it failed. The public is fickle, you know,
and the novelty of owning a cheap watch wore off. Moreover, the product
got a bad name and failed to be taken seriously. It required a great
deal of time and energy to wind a watch with such a long spring as this
one had, and I must agree that those who made jokes at the expense of
the poor Waterbury were well within their rights. Furthermore, the
watches had been linked up with inferior commodities and when purchasers
found, for example, that they had been gulled on the suit of clothes
they acquired with the watch, instead of cursing the clothier they took
out their wrath on the watch company. Then, too, the firm, in order to
get their wares distributed, had parted with them at so small a margin
of profit that nothing was made on them. The entire scheme from
beginning to end showed poor generalship. What wonder such an enterprise
went down?"

"And is that the end of the story?"

"By no means," retorted the Scotchman. "Far from it. The management took
their experience as wise people do and years