"It was to meet the objection that you have just raised that a week after the wreck the Hamilton Watch Company of Lancaster was organized. It aimed to manufacture a good, close-running watch at a moderate price, and it fulfilled its promise. The proposition was a sound business one, too, for all over the country men were employed to whom correctness of time was of vital importance--switch-tenders, motormen, engineers, conductors, not to enumerate the thousands of other working people to whom being prompt at ferries, trains, cars, and their job was imperative. So, you see, the age provided a distinct market for a high-class article of this sort and the Hamilton Company was intelligent enough to realize and seize it. Good business is seeing your chance, grabbing it, and then holding onto it." The lad smiled. "Of course there are times," continued McPhearson, "when it is possible to create a market out of whole cloth. If, for instance, you can think of something that would be useful to the public, something they themselves have never happened to think of before, you can bring it to their attention by clever advertising and make them want it. That is the method the Waterbury Watch Company followed in launching their goods back in 1880. For a long time two Massachusetts men had been wondering whether an exceedingly cheap watch that would be within the reach of even quite poor people could not be made. Such a commodity, they argued, could not fail to have an extensive sale. The problem was who could they find to construct this sort of timepiece? Then on a fine day Mr. Locke, one of the men, saw in the window of a Worcester jeweler a miniature steam engine that had previously been exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial. Immediately the thought came into his mind that a workman who could construct such a perfect toy must be both ingenious and inventive, and he went into the shop and offered Mr. Buck, the maker of the wee engine, a hundred dollars to produce for him a cheap watch of the type he had in mind." "Was Mr. Buck ready to try the stunt?" "Yes, he agreed to see what he could do," was the reply. "So he got to work and after a little while had a model ready. But, alas, it did not prove to be much of a watch, and the poor man, having toiled and worried about it day and night, finally went to bed sick. But of course that wouldn't do. He had had the money and therefore was bound either to pay it back--a thing he was in too straitened circumstances to do--or he must stick at the problem until he solved it. Both he and his wife were honest people who understood this. Accordingly Mrs. Buck begged that her husband be given a little more time. He had, declared she, a better plan in his head which he would try out as soon as he was able." "What did Mr. Locke say to that?"