The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1905-06-03
WY sOMR WATCHES KEEP BETTER TIME
THAN OTHERS.


Although experts recently testified
in court that watch which does not
lose or gain more than five seconds
month is an excellent timepiece,
American watches are occasionally
seen that do not gain or lose more
than FIVE seconds year. Such a
watch, however, is, so to speak, an
accident. The most careful watch
making cannot be expected to yield
any such result.
Few chronometers gain or lose less
than tenth of second a day. With
the chronometer the important thing
IS not that it shall run very close, but
that its rate of variation shall be regu-
lar. The same is true of watches,
but their size makes it difficult to as
sure regularity.
You may reasonably hope that a
watch which sells to the dealer with
on 4 case for $Ioo or $3.50 may be
regulated to a few seconds a month.
The best watches are sent to the Ma
tional Observatory to be observed and
regulated, and from those thus care
fully treated the most regular are Sc
lected as standard watches. Even a
cheap watch may be regulated so as
to run very close to correct time, but
the regulation may occupy months,
and may cost almost as much as the
original price of the watch. For this
reason cheap watches are for the most
part not very closely regulated.
Many ofthe most expensive watches
seldom run we'll, because the owners
are content to have them cleaned, re-
paired and regulated by incompe.
tent persons. Excellent as American
watches are, the watch repairing busi-
siness in this country is in a sad state.
Asa matter of fact American watch
making, and in this city watch re-
pairing, is mainly in the hands of
foreigners. Nearly rs per cent. Of
the watchmakers in the factories are
Germans, 20 per cent. English and per-
haps S per cent. French, Swiss
and Scandinavians. The few native
Americans now learning the trade are
usually the sons of some foreign born
watchmakers.
Ordinary workmen at the bench in
this city earn from SIS to SIS week.
A few earn from $25 to $50 a week,
and perhaps half score of the best
men earn from $50 to $40 a week.
Watch repairing in the big jewell
ers' shops is not profitable if the
work is done conscientiously, because
customers are seldom willing to pay
the cost Of careful work. It often
takes more time and greater skill to
learn what is the matter with a watch
than to remedy the defect. The ordi-
nary workmen in a large establish
ment lack the skill to discover the de-
fects of a fine watch. So, too, do
many of the self-employing watch
makers.
In the big shops really fine watch
isoften turned over to the most skilled
man in the place for observation
less skilled man may be trusted to
correct the error when it is discov-
cred, and cheap watch in for re-
pairs goes to a cheap man.
The most conscientious of the self
employing watchmakers hesitate to
undertake the repair fcheap watches,
because the cost of repairs may be a
considerable percentage of the origi-
nal price of the watch. Such watch
maker the other day named third
the price of a cheap watch as the cost
of repairs. The owner thought the
price high, but the job was not very
profitable one to the matchmaker.
AS matter of fact there are really
very few watchmakers in New York.
The business of making watches is
left chiefly to the great factories and
they are not situated here. The best
watch repairers, however, can make
watches entire, because the earlier
apprentices learned the whole trade.
and every skilled watch repairer is
often called upon to make in his little
shop the missing parts of fine watches,
because they cannot so satisfactorily
be bought ready made.
Once in long while such man is
called upon to make a watch case,
though case making long ago was
handed over to specialists working in
large factories. The factories do not
ordinarily make cases to fit unusual
and old fashioned watches, and on
this account such a task occasionally
falls to the lot of skilled old watch
makers long since trained abroad.
Such case costs double or treble the
price of factory made case. .-New
York SWn.