Geneva, as is pretty well known, has long been a busy centre of the
Swiss watchmaking trade, the work executed being minute, elegant, and
trustworthy. The trade in watchmaking, however, is also a staple in
the cantons of Neuchatel and Berne. Tourists in Switzerland have often
occasion to pass through secluded valleys, the inhabitants of which, a
peaceful and industrious race, are almost all devoted to watchmaking.
It is a craft pursued in cottages, as a kind of domestic manufacture;
and proficiency in fabricating the delicate mechanism has come down
from father to son for several generations. We are reminded of the
old-fashioned hand-loom system of weaving, which used to prevail in
English and Scotch villages in times passed away. Just as that old
system of weaving vanished in the introduction of the power-loom
moved by machinery, so is watchmaking by hand about to pass away in
Switzerland, and some other quarters. Watchmaking by machinery on a
large and comprehensive scale has been brought to a wonderful degree of
perfection in various parts of the United States. Immense quantities of
American watches of a useful kind will soon, as is anticipated, greatly
damage the system of making by hand.
It would be idle to waste time in complaining of change of fashion
in any kind of manufacture. Skill, capital, and machinery are sure
to carry the day. In the progress of affairs the old must give place
to the new. In such cases the best plan is not to maintain a useless
struggle, but at once to go over to the enemy--try to rival him on his
own ground. Still one does not like to see an old and respectable trade
ruined. It is stated that at least forty thousand men and women have
hitherto been engaged within a limited district in Switzerland upon the
watch-trade, all of whom must now alter their course of operations,
quitting their rural resorts, and emigrating, or possibly becoming
workers in factories. We are sorry for the crisis, but in economics
such is the rule of the game.
A Swiss correspondent in the _Times_ (January 5) presents some
interesting particulars concerning the watch-trade, as it has till
now been carried on. The division of labour has been immense in
completing a single watch. He says: 'A repeating watch goes through
the hands of no less than a hundred and thirty different workmen
before being delivered to commerce. With such a division of labour,
long apprenticeship was rendered almost superfluous; so that any
man, without being acquainted at all with the watch industry before,
might be able to learn a branch of it in the course of a few weeks.
This last circumstance, together with the relatively high wages
offered, induced during the time of prosperity of the trade a good many
agricultural labourers to leave their former occupation and dedicate
themselves to the watch industry. A superabundance of hands soon
ensued, accompanied by a falling of wages, and besides, the quality
of the products manufactured became yearly worse and worse. Only some
few tradesmen continued to manufacture watches of higher qualities,
while the majority of them supplied the markets with the lowest kind
of products.' Here we have an explanation of at least one cause of the
decline of the Swiss watch-trade. An over-confidence in monopoly led to
deterioration of the article. The result was that Swiss watches fell
into discredit in the United States. The imports fell from a hundred
and sixty-nine thousand watches in 1864 to seventy-five thousand
watches in 1876. There was ultimately a diminution in value to the
extent of four hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds in four years.
The diminution did not alone arise from fair competition. All European
watches introduced to the United States are charged with a duty of
25 per cent. Few manufacturers can stand so heavy a tax. At the same
time the poor Swiss had another rival to contend with. The manufacture
of watches in the Swiss style had been introduced into Besançon in
France, whereby there was a still further limitation of exports from
Switzerland.
The question naturally arises, 'What is the difference in the number of
watches made by a workman by hand-labour and by a man superintending
machinery in the same space of time?' One authority specifies forty
watches a year for a workman by hand-labour, and one hundred and
fifty watches a year by employing machinery. Mr John Fernie, a
civil-engineer, writing to the _Times_ (January 11), gives from
personal knowledge a considerably higher estimate of the comparative
power of machinery. His observations are well worth quoting. 'Having,'
he says, 'visited the American Watch Manufactory at Waltham,
Massachusetts, last June, on my way to the Exhibition at Philadelphia,
I may be permitted to say a few words supplementary to the article in
your paper of Friday, on the watch-trade of Switzerland. During my
visit the works at Waltham were turning out three hundred and sixty-six
watches per day, and were employing somewhere about one thousand hands;
and instead of their turning out one hundred and fifty watches per
hand per annum, they were turning out at the ratio of one hundred and
ninety watches per person employed per annum. Even at the ratio quoted
by your correspondent, four hundred and twenty-five watches per day by
one thousand three hundred and sixty hands would give one hundred and
sixty-two watches per man per annum against the Swiss forty watches
per man per annum. Of the thousand hands employed at Waltham, I found
at least three-fourths of them were women, and it appeared to be a
kind of work peculiarly fitted for them. The whole of the working
parts of the watches, the wheels, pinions, axles, screws, and jewels
were made by women, by means of the most perfect automatic machinery
I have ever seen.' Some of the watchmaking machines were exhibited
at Philadelphia. 'But fine as those few machines were, they gave one
no idea of the spacious works, the airy, comfortable workrooms, and
the perfect sets of machinery, executing in the most exquisite way the
numberless details involved in the manufacture of a watch, every one of
their pieces duplicates of one another, save and except the holes in
the jewels. These as yet it had been found impossible to drill out to
such a nicety; but by a series of delicate gauges they are paired and
numbered, and each watch is registered, so that in case of an accident,
that particular size may be rent out. When it is considered that many
of the pieces can only be examined by a microscope, and that each piece
is a duplicate of the thousands made except the jewels, the superiority
over the hand-made watches is as apparent as that of the modern
Enfield rifles over the old brown-bess. The basis of the duplicate
system at Waltham lies in a complete series of gauges, ranging from a
considerable size to the very smallest dimensions. Having been an early
worker myself in the manufacture of duplicate machines and engines on
the basis of Sir Joseph Whitworth's scale of the inch divided into
thousandths, I was desirous to see how they obtained their scale; and
Mr Webster, the able engineer of the Company, informed me he found the
thousandth of an inch too coarse a dimension, and the ten-thousandth
of an inch too fine; and he was led to divide the millimetre into a
hundred parts, and found it a proper proportion for his work; and it is
from a series of gauges founded on this system that the whole of the
watches are built up and the constant accuracy of all their dimensions
maintained. The men employed in the manufactory are principally
engaged in keeping the machines in such order as to maintain their
proper sizes, and in fitting the watches together and testing them
for time-keeping, and in the heavy work of making the cases. As yet
the Waltham Watch Company have not gone largely into the manufacture
of the very highest class of watches, the great demand being for good
time-keepers at a reasonable price; but there is no doubt that while
they have developed a system which is driving the Swiss manufacturers
out of the market, they have established a system which is equally
good for the better class of watches; and unless some English Company
undertake the work in a similar way, they will ultimately drive us out
of the market too. I need hardly say I have no interest in the Waltham
Company except the interest of a mechanical man in the most interesting
manufactory I ever visited.'
It is, we think, perfectly clear, from the above and other
descriptions, that hand-made watches, unless perhaps of a superior
class, requiring exquisite polish and finish by hand, must speedily
be driven out of the market by watches made on an unerring automatic
principle, and on a wholesale plan by machinery. The only thing the
Swiss can do is to adopt the same species of machinery into their
manufacture. Great capital and enterprise, however, will be needed
to compete with the gigantic concerns springing up in America. In
California, by the assistance of Chinese, watchmaking is making great
strides. Already, hundreds of thousands of watches are produced
annually in the United States; and by establishing trade factories
in Russia and other countries, the Americans to all appearance will
soon have the command of the traffic in watches all over the world.
We have not heard of any movement in England likely to counteract
this stupendous system of making and dealing in watches. The English
apparently rely on the deservedly high character of their finer class
of watches, ranging in price from twenty to thirty guineas and upwards.
And it may be a long time before the Americans are able to rival them
in this department of the trade.