later began over again,
afterward reaping greater success than they had ever known, all of which
proves that it never pays to give up."

"Haven't lots of other kinds of cheap watches been made since?"

"Yes. The Ingersoll is one. It is the result of several years'
experiment with a dollar watch. At first a thick, clumsy contrivance
that wound from the back like a clock was introduced, and from this
stepping stone Ingersoll developed a second and third type, each an
improvement on the original. Having thereby convinced himself that the
dollar watch was not only possible but would sell, he got the Waterbury
Company to put out his idea for him; now the Ingersolls have in addition
two factories of their own, and the three together average an output of
about twenty thousand watches a day. In a country as big as ours,
however, the great problem is to get goods known from east to west, and
from the north to the south, and this obstacle of distribution was the
one the company encountered. How was the country generally to know there
was a good dollar watch? Owing to the scant margin of profit on which
the watches were sold, it did not pay large retailers to carry them.
Neither could they find even standing-room in a shop like your
fathers'." With dancing eyes the Scotchman regarded Christopher.

"Moreover," he went on, "although Ingersoll guaranteed his watch, tricky
competition arose. Other firms borrowed the name as a label for their
own poor goods; some merchants took the Ingersoll watch and ran up the
price on it, privately pocketing the profit. To outwit such practices
the company not only printed their name on the dials of their watches
but they carefully printed the exact price on the boxes in which they
were packed. You would have thought this would have forever put at an
end any foul play, wouldn't you? But even these precautions were
circumvented by sharpers who advertised their wretched wares as
marked-down Ingersolls. Thus the company was compelled to fight inch by
inch for its rights."

"I'd no idea business was such a mess," ejaculated Christopher. "And
what happened to the Ingersoll people finally?"

"Providentially a turn came in their affairs," was the answer. "It is an
ill wind that blows nobody good, the saying goes. In every calamity
lurks some good and for the Ingersoll Company, at least, there was good
in the Great War. Again we see a clever manufacturer grasping his
opportunity. No one knew better th