vehicles, and of all manufactures. The carriage manufacture in New Jersey stands next in magnitude to that of New York. This is mostly at Newark, where great numbers are turned out, of an approved quality. A feature of the carriage and wagon business that has been introduced of late years, is that all possible parts of vehicles can be purchased in any quantity, consequently the wheelwright business of small towns has been entirely revolutionized. They can no longer make an entire vehicle, as formerly, with any success, but purchase wheels, axles, top frames, springs, etc., of any and every pattern, to put together and finish. All these parts are produced in great quantities, by machine. Hence, as we see, there are in New York, 31 spoke factories, which turn out 915,789 spokes per annum, also felloe factories and hub factories, etc. The largest city factories, however, make all the parts within themselves. Let us trace the successive steps of the building of a pleasurecarriage. The design, whatever may be the style, is first prepared, on paper, of an inch to the foot. This being approved by the purchaser or owner, a geometrical plan is executed upon the black-board. The patterns are then cut in the wood, and from this skeleton the shape and proportions are determined. There must be exercised in this process, the utmost mathematical exactness, and the most careful selection of material. The wooden frame is now removed to the smithy; then come in requisition, springs, tires, hinges, axles, bolts, locks, and every variety of form by which iron can conduce to the strength of the fabric. This being completed, the skeleton is moved to the body department, to receive its floors and panels, the sides with their proper curvature, the seats of the destined construction, and the doors with their trimmings. From this room, the body goes to the paint room. Formerly this was a tedious process, but the adoption of Piotrowski's permanent liquid wood filling substitutes for the half-dozen preliminary coats of white lead formerly required a single coat of this liquid, and the work is ready for the color painting and repeated varnishings and rubbings down required. The carriage next seeks the trimming room, to be decked with fine cloths, silks, lace, carpet, embossed leather, or the finest morocco, and becomes as tasteful as art can make it. While the body of the vehicle is thus being prepared, the carriage, or wheels, axles, perches and shafts have also been approaching a state ready to receive it. The felloes, shafts, and nave, each of its appropriate and well-selected wood, are combined into wheels, that must in size bear a certain proportion to the body. The average difference between the fore and hind wheels is eight inches. In the combination, each department supplies its proper part, and when ready to receive the body, that is hung upon the springs, and the whole is ready for the final polish. Apart from the coach or pleasure-vehicle business, is the wagon business, which is of great extent, all the parts being formed by machines of late invention. The lumber for these heavy vehicles is of considerable dimensions. The plank used is three to four inches thick. This must be all well seasoned. Hence capital is required to keep a sufficient stock on hand, since it requires four or five years to season, or one year for every inch of thickness. The timber for hubs is of black locust. This, of different sizes, has the bark removed, and is bored through the centre to facilitate the seasoning. All the lumber thus seasoned in stock, is, when ready, removed to the sawmill. Here machines are usually ready to shape every part: upright and circular saws to cut the plank into shafts and felloes after it is marked; planing machines, and mortising machinery; lathes for turning spokes and hubs; for boring holes for the spokes; for driving in the spokes; for shaping and finishing the felloes; for boring holes in the hubs to receive the boxes, so as to insure a solid bearing, and for turning the hubs, of which the two ends are cut off at once by circular saws. All these machines soon turn the solid plank into finished wheels, while the body is growing under similar applications in another room, under the direction of various departments. The iron axles are turned in the machine shops, where also all the tires, bands, straps, bolts, rivets, etc., are prepared and applied. The wagons are then ready for the paint. This is the general operation of wagon-making in large establishments. During the war, some hundreds of thousands of army wagons were required by the government, and the energies of the manufacturers were severely taxed to furnish them as fast as they were needed. Numerous ambulances were also built for the army. The demand for express wagons that has grown up of late years, has become very large, and they are produced in great per packed round with sand, the centre is made to communicate, by means of a flue, with a chimney 120 feet high. The draught thus created cools the centre. The same, if not far greater importance attaches to the uniform toughness of the iron of a wheel as to that of a cannon. The lives of hundreds of passengers are always depending upon the soundness of the running wheels, and the utmost care is taken to make and keep them sound. fection as respects strength and price. An- four days are required. While red-hot the other large demand for vehicles has taken wheel is removed, and having its edges the shape of railroad cars, and these almost rival coaches in the extent of manufacture. In New York, the value of production is nearly $1,500,000 per annum, mostly at Troy. The car-wheels are of iron, and the utmost care is taken in the manufacture of them, that when cast the iron shall cool equally in all its parts. For this purpose, when the wheel is cast in a mold, it is removed as speedily as possible into a circular chamber or furnace, composed of fire brick, 44 inches thick, and surrounded by an iron case. When they are there deposited, the opening is closed, and the heat of the whole is raised to nearly the melting point. All the avenues to and from the interior are then closed, and the whole is left to cool gradually. By this process of raising the heat, the temperature of the wheel is equalized in all its parts, and as the heat can then only subside through the wall, it cools so gradually that all parts of the wheel contract alike. For this cooling The census of 1860 gives the following statistics of the production of carriages, wagons, carts and children's carriages for the year ending June, 1860. There has been, generally, an increased production since that period, though what were distinctively known as "Southern carriages" are manufactured in less quantities than formerly. The quality of the pleasure carriages has greatly improved, and though generally lighter, they are stronger than they formerly were. Cost of ments. raw material. .3,917 $14,131,537 $9,085,301 Wagons and carts.....3,305 AMERICAN CLOCKS. $10,001,891 $26,848,905 8,703,937 129,540 374,350 he would have been in far more danger of being burned for a wizard than of being PERHAPS there is no one article of more laughed at as a humbug. The water-clock, general utility than "Yankee clocks," and in which the wheels were turned by the flow none on which more small wit has been ex- of water, was for two thousand years the pended both at home and abroad, The land only clock of the world. In the eleventh of "wooden clocks and nutmegs" has been century, falling weights were substituted for a standing jibe against those who have so flowing water, but the clocks were huge cleverly and perseveringly executed those affairs, only used in churches and monastepractical ideas that tend directly to the ame- ries. The escapement wheel was invented lioration of the human condition. Alfred in 1379, by Henry de Vick. About three the Great and other old progress men dis hundred years later, Galileo discovered the covered the value of time, and were hard put law of the pendulum, and the mechanism of to it to measure it out. Some of the old the clock underwent no further material fellows sought to do it by the dropping of change for another century. They were a water; many marked the progress of the luxury attainable only by the rich. They sun; and other devices were employed with- were imported into this country from Europe out very great accuracy. Alfred contrived down to the formation of the federal governtwelve candles, which being burned one after ment, at high prices. Some of these were the other, divided his day into twelve portions, the pendulum clocks, about six feet high, and which had each their special employment. generally stood in the landings of the old Twelve candles were not convenient, how- houses. About the time of the formation ever, to carry in one's fob, and were trouble- of the federal government, however, Eli some to light and snuff. If a Yankee peddler had walked in upon him with a wooden clock under his arm to sell for a crown piece, Terry, of Windsor, Connecticut, made some clocks of wood, of a small size, to hang up against the wall. In 1793, he began making them, as a business, in Plymouth, Connect- shock. Up to this time clocks had been icut. Then he made a few in the year by made wholly of wood, the movements being his own labor. In 1800 he had procured of maple, oak, and cherry, the pinions of the help of a couple of young men. The ivy or laurel, and the dials of whitewood, wheels were marked out on the wood with In 1837, a thirty-hour clock with brass movesquare and compass, and then cut out with ment was invented, but owing to the finana fine saw and jack-knife, the teeth of the cial depression was not manufactured to any wheels being formed in the same manner. extent before 1840 or 1841. Eight-day Twice a year Mr. Terry would pack up some clocks with brass movements followed, and of these clocks and make a journey into the very soon the business was greatly increased, new country, by which name the region west and brass rolling mills erected to supply the of the North River was then called. There metal for the plates and wheels. Every part he found sale for his wooden "movements" of the manufacture was cheapened, till "one at $25 each. He so prospered in this, that style of the thirty-hour clocks was sold as by the year 1807 a number of persons in low as seventy-five cents, and a very fair Waterbury associated themselves into a com- eight-day clock for four dollars. Every part pany to furnish Terry with stock of which of the work was done by machinery. The he was to make the movements. Purchasing export demand soon commenced, and has an old mill, he introduced some machinery kept on till now American clocks are sold in and undertook to make 500 clocks at one immense quantities in all the countries of time, a larger number than any clock-maker Europe, in Western Asia, China, and Japan, in the world had ever attempted. The price and South Africa. The house of Jerome & of these clocks, under such extravagent pro- Co. was merged in a joint stock company in duction, fell from $25, which, though often 1850, called the Jerome Manufacturing Co. paid in barter, had hitherto been the regular In 1853 and 1854, this company produced price, to $20, $15, and finally, about 1811 444,000 clocks per annum, and other comor 1812, to $10. In 1810, Mr. Terry sold panies as many more. Of the thirty-one his factory to Messrs. Seth Thomas and clock companies in operation in 1852, nine Hoadley, but a short time after went into failed, four were burned, and five wound up the business again. Messrs. Thomas and on account of the low prices. In 1855, the Hoadley carried on the business together till Jerome Co. failed utterly, and J. C. Brown, 1813, when Mr. Thomas established himself then the next largest manufacturer, also in the business in that part of Plymouth failed. A reorganization of the business folnow known as Thomaston, and the business lowed, and now, after fifteen years, there has been conducted by him, his sons and successors, to the present time, and it is known-in its two-fold departments-as the Seth Thomas Clock Co. and Seth Thomas' Sons & Co., the largest clock manufactory in the world. are of all descriptions of clocks, fifteen manufacturing companies, ranking in the extent of their business about as follows: Seth Thomas' Clock Co., making over 150,000 clocks per annum, and having connected with them as a kindred outgrowth of the original house of Seth Thomas & Sons, Seth Thomas' Sons & Co., who are manufacturing largely fine clocks after the French styles, and a very superior article of lever clocks; the New Haven Clock Co., the successors But to return to our history. Mr. Terry having resumed business, and finding the trade greatly depressed, clocks selling at $5, and some of the new firms failing, invented a new style which he called the "Pillar scroll top case," and which sold largely, through of the Jerome Manufacturing Co.; the E. N. peddlers, at $15. Among his apprentices was Chauncey Jerome, who, after coming of age, commenced business for himself, and after many vicissitudes became the largest manufacturer of cheap clocks in the world. His principal factory was at New Haven, and his frequent introduction of new styles revived the flagging trade. In 1837, however, the great financial panic ruined most of the clock manufacturers, and greatly reduced the business of those who stood the Welch Manufacturing Co., of Forestville, Conn.; the Waterbury Clock Co., (successors to Benedict, Burnham & Co.;) the Ansonia Clock Co., (successors to J. C. Brown & Co. ;) the Gilbert Manufacturing Co., E. Ingraham & Co., Welch, Spring & Co., the Atkins Clock Co., (the last three of Bristol or its vicinity,) and Samuel Peck & Co., of New Haven. There are also two establishments engaged in the manufacture of regulator clocks and other fine work: The How |