immediate vicinity of the largest carriage
manufactury in the world, which turns out a finished carriage every
hour; much of the work being done by machinery and systematized in much
the same manner as the clock-making. American carriages are fast
following American clocks to foreign countries, to the West Indies,
Australia and the Sandwich Islands, Mexico and South America, and I
believe the day is not far distant when they will be exported to Europe
in large quantities, and the present prospect seems far more favorable
for them than it did for me when I introduced my first cargo of clocks
into England.

When I first saw this city in 1812, its population was less than five
thousand, and it looked to me like a country town. I wandered about the
streets early one morning with a bundle of clothes and some bread and
cheese in my hands little dreaming that I should live to see so great a
change, or that it ever would be my home. I remember seeing the loads of
wood and chips for family use lying in front of the houses, and acres of
land then in cornfields and valued at a small sum, are now covered with
fine buildings and stores and factories in about the heart of the city.

When I moved my case making business to New Haven, the project was
ridiculed by other clock-makers, of going to a city to manufacture by
steam power, and yet it seems to have been the commencement of
manufacturers in the country, coming to New Haven to carry on their
business. Numbers came to me to get my opinion and learn the advantages
it had over manufacturing in the country, which I always informed them
in a heavy business was very great, the item of transportation alone
over-balancing the difference between water and steam power. The
facilities for procuring stock and of shipping, being also an important
item. Not one of the good citizens will deny that this great business of
clock-making which I first brought to New Haven has been of immense
advantage and of great importance to the city. Through its agency
millions of money has been brought here, adding materially to the
general prosperity and wealth, besides bringing it into notice wherever
its productions are sent. I have been told that there is nothing in the
eastern world that attracts the attention of the inhabitants like a
Yankee clock. It has this moment come into my mind of several years ago
giving a dozen brass clocks to a missionary at Jerusalem; they were
shipped from London to Alexandr