But Eli Terry followed his own judgment instead of that of the croakers; before he died he was making ten or twelve thousand clocks in a year and was selling them too. They brought him a fortune. Thus was the industry of making timepieces born in America. It began in New England, which is still the chief center of manufacture, and it began with clocks, not watches, for the simple reason that in those days, a watch was a luxury whereas a clock was a necessity. Like the watch industry in Switzerland, American clock-making was an active business from the start, and, as we have seen, the man with whom it started was a typically Yankee combination of ingenious mind, skilful fingers, and a knack for business. Of course, the conditions of life in America at that time had a great deal to do with methods used in building up the industry. Instead of a civilization centuries old that had wealth, rank, royalty, and a complete organization of all methods of living, here was a new country learning to do things in its own way. It is hard for us to imagine the conditions which prevailed when our whole population was a mere fringe of scattered settlements along the Atlantic seaboard; when people made long trips on horseback or by stage-coach and men wore powdered wigs and knickerbockers; when New York was a small town on the lower end of Manhattan Island, and Chicago had not even been dreamed of. Still, it was necessary to tell time, and our thrifty ancestors needs must watch the minutes in order to save them as thriftily as they saved everything else. Not one person out of hundreds, in a country where a living must be wrung from the soil by means of hard work, could afford to own anything so expensive as a watch, but every one felt it necessary to have a clock, if possible, and it became one of the greatest treasures of the home. [Illustration: THE FIRST YANKEE CLOCK MAKER _Eli Terry, America's first clock manufacturer, peddled his wares among the shrewd, hard-headed sons of Connecticut._] This, then, was the market in which Terry and those who followed him had to sell. It was a market that could not afford to pay for ornament but desired practical service at low cost. What was needed, therefore, was a clock that would keep time and cost not a cent more than was absolutely necessary. The American industry was forced to start upon a basis entirely different from that of Europe. As Eli Terry's business grew, he needed assistance, and he secured the help of a young mechanic named Seth Thomas from West Haven, and the two worked together for some time.