This low-priced clock was as remarkable in its way as was the dollar watch, which it foreshadowed. And like the watch, it would not have been possible except through machine work and quantity production. It was a success at once and Jerome's business rapidly increased. In 1840, he was established in Bristol, turning out the new clocks by the thousand, and rapidly making a fortune. A year or two later, he decided to send a consignment of them to England. Again, people shook their heads and prophesied failure. "You're losing your mind, Chauncey," they told him as they had told Eli Terry before him. The older wooden movements could not, of course, endure a sea voyage without swelling and becoming useless. A brass movement could, of course, be sent anywhere, and some of the more expensive ones had been shipped to all parts of the country, yet it seemed absurd enough to send American clocks to England where labor was so cheap—to England, which was then the chief clockmaker of the world. Nevertheless, Jerome persevered, and his son sailed for London with a cargo of the cheap clocks. At first, the English trade would have none of them. No clock so cheap could possibly be good, they said, and Connecticut was the home of "the wooden nutmegs." It was only after great difficulty that they were introduced. Young Jerome got rid of the first few by leaving them about in retail stores, asking no payment for them until sold. The enterprise was saved by an event which was a joke in itself. The English revenue law at that time permitted the owner of imported goods to fix their taxable value. But the government could take any such property upon payment of a sum ten per cent greater than the owner's valuation. Jerome's clocks were valued at their wholesale price, and were presently seized by the customs officials on the ground that this valuation was fraudulently low. The elder Jerome chuckled upon learning of this. He was well satisfied to have closed out his first cargo at ten per cent profit, and at once sent over another shipment which was taken over by the customs as promptly as the first. But by the time the third consignment arrived, enough of the clocks had been sold to establish a demand for them among the retailers, and the officials finally conceded that the low price might be a reasonable one after all. Jerome was not at the height of his prosperity. He had the largest and probably the most profitable clock business in the country; and, in the few years following, his product was exported to all parts of the world. Then the Bristol factory burned down and he moved to New Haven, where the Jerome Manufacturing Company enjoyed a brief period of great success. The business was constantly extended, and the wholesale price of the cheap brass clocks was brought as low as seventy-five cents. This figure seems almost impossibly low for the time, but the authority for it is Jerome's own autobiography.