Of the occasional successes due, on the other hand, to perfect harmony between these two factors, the Elgin National Watch Company, established at Elgin, Illinois, in 1864, was one of the first. Its officials and promoters were not watchmakers but business men—a group of Western capitalists who organized the company at the suggestion of a few trained men from Waltham, to whose technical experience and knowledge they gave entire liberty of action from the first. This combination of Western enterprise and Eastern mechanical skill was a great and immediate success. Within six years from its incorporation, the Elgin Company had built its factory, designed and made its own machinery, and marketed forty-two thousand watches. It is said to be the only American watch company which has paid dividends from the beginning. And yet this achievement cannot be traced to anything strikingly distinctive either in the policy or in the product. It was a case of doing rapidly and easily, with vast previous experience to build upon, what the parent company had so long strived to accomplish, and of doing this honestly and well. In a small way, it was like the rapid growth of democratic principles in America, having, as it were, the British commonwealth of a thousand years on which to base itself. The period of the development of American watch-making was also the period of the rapid and enormous expansion of railroads. The two were naturally related, in that railroading demands the constant use of a great number of watches, while its progress in punctuality and speed is in direct proportion to the supply of reliable timekeepers. Precision is here the great essential; every passenger must have the means of being on hand in time in order not to miss his train. But what is of far greater importance, railroad men must know and keep the exact time not alone for their own protection but in order that they may protect and safeguard the lives of those who are entrusted to their care. Most of our great inventions and improvements can be traced to some pressing human need. Many of them, unfortunately, are delayed until some great catastrophe shows the need. It required a disastrous wreck to bring home to the railroads and make clear the necessity for absolute accuracy in the timepieces of their employees.