THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



February, 1914 



Romances of Modern Business 



T 



HE American romance is in the large office-buildings and the marts of trade; it is the 

 romance of great achievements in commerce, in industrial leadership. And it is a wonder- 

 ful romance! The child of the world's nations is leading them !— Arnold Bennett. 



CHAPTER II 



How Time Was Sent Ticking Around the World 



This story tells how the world was helped to measure its time. 

 It is an interesting story, well worth a volume. It is about the 

 Ingersoll dollar watch. 



We first see two farmer boys from Michigan, with a small loft 

 in Fulton Street, in New York City, selling rubber type and 

 other small things of their own invention. 



Then we turn a few pages and view these same rustic lads 

 transformed into the executives of a business with its arms 

 reaching to all corners of the earth. 



Robert H. Ingersoll and his brother, Charles, by peddling their 

 specialties, had worked up a small trade in New York. One day 

 the elder boy noticed a small clock hanging on the wall of an 

 office he visited. The young man saw a vision in that clock. 



Its works were machine-made and, therefore, inexpensive. He 

 believed they could be made small enough to fit into a watch-case. 

 He knew that a watch so made could be sold at a small price 

 and would meet a universal need. 



Young Ingersoll requested the maker of the clock to reduce the 

 size of the works. The suggestion was ridiculed. But the farmer 

 boy did not mind being laughed at and worked on the model him- 

 self. The result was that the first Ingersoll watch was offered 

 for sale in 1893. 



Ingersoll believed that his fortune had been made when he 

 completed the watch. He knew that there were hundreds of 

 thousands of citizens walking up and down in the United States 

 at that very moment who would be glad to pay a dollar for such 

 a watch. 



But how was he to reach these people, how acquaint the public 

 with his product ? The co-operation of dealers could not be en- 

 listed; they preferred to sell higher-priced watches. So months 

 passed in the little loft in Fulton Street. 



The psychology of advertising had impressed itself on Robert 

 Ingersoll when he had read a small weekly magazine that reached 

 the Michigan farm. He decided to insert a small advertisement — 

 the smallest that would be accepted — in a magazine. 



Enters now a magazine advertising manager. He had seen 

 the small announcement and perceived the commercial possibili- 

 ties of a dollar watch. He found two young Western men in a 

 small loft with a big commodity and not knowing what to do 

 with it. 



Then the Ingersoll brothers listened to what seemed like a 

 fairy story to them. They should take a quarter-page of space 

 in the magazine and great success would be theirs. 



This they considered a too uncertain financial risk. They were 

 reluctant. The advertising man was persistent and eloquent. 

 Ingersoll 's courage fattened on the other's vision. The contract 

 lor the quarter-page advertisement was given. 



''It was like staking an entire fortune on the turn of a wheel," 

 said Robert H. Ingersoll, in telling of this crucial episode in the 



history of his business. "I can never forget that time. From the 

 day the contract was made and the copy O.K.'d, until the maga- 

 zine came out, three weeks later, we waited with bated breath. 



"The first day's mail after that magazine had reached its readers 

 brought us fifteen hundred dollars' worth of orders. From then on 

 business increased as we broadened our magazine advertising 

 campaign. The world's time used to be measured by a bell, a sun 

 dial, or a steam whistle, but now Ingersoll watches have ticked 

 their way around the world and the world measures its time by 

 them." 



It is only a little more than twenty years since the Ingersoll 

 watch was placed upon the market. Today it is used throughout 

 the world. Thirty-five million watches have been sold. Fifteen 

 thousand are manufactured and shipped daily. 



After Colonel Roosevelt returned from his African trip, he 

 told Mr. Ingersoll that in some places of the Dark Continent he 

 found his fame resting on having come from the same land where 

 the Ingersoll watch was made. 



Robert Ingersoll, now the president of a great industry, often 

 has wondered what he and his brother would have done if the 

 magazine advertising manager had not walked into their office 

 and directed their course. 



Today the course would be perfectly obvious. A young firm 

 with something that everyone wanted would find some way to 

 buy space in the magazines and tell the public about it. But 

 this was in a day before high-power magazine publicity had 

 attained its present efficiency. 



The advertising manager showed them how to tell the entire 

 world of their watch, how to reach the thirty-five million men and 

 women who today are using Ingersoll watches. From a loft in 

 a New York building the news of this dollar watch being made 

 spread throughout the world. A direct avenue of success was 

 opened through the pages of the national magazines. 



Great as the Ingersoll watch is, and great as was the latent 

 demand for it, its history could not have become one of the most 

 stirring romances of modern business life if it had not been 

 written, chapter by chapter, month by month, in the advertising 

 pages of the American national magazines. 



And the public service promoted in the development of an 

 industry such as Robert H. Ingersoll & Bro. must not be over- 

 looked. Thirty-five million men, women, and children of many 

 nations of the world have been enabled to measure their working 

 and playing hours by a correct timepiece. They have become 

 more correct and businesslike; their fives have been made more 

 orderly and systematic. 



Mr. Ingersoll started out to give the world a dollar watch, 

 and, despite the increased price of labor and materials, still is 

 turning out a dollar watch. And the world has been made the 

 better for it. 



This is the second of a series 0/ articles that is being published to show how magazine advertising is serving the public. 



