It took a long time to make a clock in this way, even for fingers that were as clever as Terry's, and it is no wonder that he was compelled to charge from twenty to forty dollars apiece, a sum, which, by-the-way, would be equal to at least four times as much to-day according to the difference in the purchasing power of money. We must remember, too, that a family then bought its clock as it bought a wagon or a spinning-wheel, almost as a man buys his house to-day. Certainly it was a far more important transaction relatively than the purchase of a motor-car. Probably, if one could have overheard some of these roadside clock-sales it would have been noted that the bargaining was not all upon one side, for there was not a great deal of money in circulation, and people were very apt to "swap." Likely as not, Terry would have to take his payment in lumber, in clothing, or in some other commodity and these, in turn, he would dispose of when an opportunity presented itself. This was more or less the type of the old horseback Yankee trader of the days when men still remembered the Revolutionary War. These were the days when a man who produced some one thing might be forced, in order to realize on its value, to trade it for almost anything else. When we think of the early American timepiece, we generally picture to ourselves the so-called "Grandfather's Clock," the kind with the tall case which Longfellow wrote about as standing on a turning in the stair and ticking away: "Forever!" "Never!" "Never!" "Forever!" as it marked the passage of the years. But Eli Terry, the first of all American clock-makers, could not well carry such a big contrivance with him on his horseback trips; therefore, while he made the works for these clocks, he left it for other people to construct the cases; the clocks which he sold complete were those which could stand upon a shelf or hang upon the wall. After a time, his orders increased to a point where he felt justified in moving into an old water-power mill and rigging machinery to do some parts of the work. Thus we find machinery used in American clock-making almost from the beginning of the industry. Terry thus was a real manufacturer; he had grasped the importance of machine production in contrast to hand-craftsmanship. The move paid; it cut the cost of making nearly in half and greatly increased the output. He now could afford to sell his clocks more cheaply, and the business grew at once. After a while he began to make clocks in lots of one or two hundred and then, indeed, his neighbors shook their heads gravely. "You are losing your mind, Eli," they told him, in solemn warning. "The first thing you know, the country will be so full of clocks that there will be no market for them. You are getting reckless and ruining your business."