A good clock cost from seventy-five to one hundred
and fifty dollars, and the most indifferent article in the market could
not be obtained for less than twenty-five dollars. At the opening of the
present century, the demand for them was so small that but three hundred
and fifty clocks were made in the State of Connecticut, which was then,
as at present, the one most largely engaged in this branch of American
industry. To-day the annual manufacture of Connecticut is about six
hundred thousand clocks of all kinds, which command a wholesale price of
from fifty cents upward, the greater number bringing the maker less than
five dollars. Thus the reader will see that, while the business of the
clock-maker has prospered so extraordinarily, valuable timepieces have
been brought within the reach of even the poorest.
The man to whom the country is indebted for this wonderful and
beneficial increase is CHAUNCEY JEROME, who was born at Canaan,
Connecticut, in 1793. His father was a blacksmith and nail-maker, to
which trade he added the cultivation of the little farm on which he
lived; and being poor, it was necessary for him to labor hard in all his
callings in order to provide his family with a plain subsistence.
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