"Question. How long have yon been in the trade?"
"Answer. Nearly thirty years."
"Quest. The trade is at present much depressed?"
"Ans. Yes, sadly."
"Quest. What is your opinion of the cause of that distress?"
"Ans. I think it is owing to a number of watches that have been made so exceedingly bad that they will hardly look at them in the foreign markets; all with a handsome outside show, and the works hardly fit for any thing."
"Quest. Do you mean to say, that all the watches made in this country are of that description?"
"Ans. No; only a number which are made up by some of the Jews, and other low manufacturers. I recollect something of the sort years ago, of a fall-off of the East India work, owing to there being a number of handsome looking watches sent out, for instance, with hands on and figures, as if they shewed seconds, and had not any work regular to shew the seconds: the hand went round, but it was not regular."
"Quest. They had no perfect movements?"
"Ans. No, they had not; that was a long time since, and we had not any East India work for a long time afterwards."
In the home market, inferior but showy watches are made at a cheap rate, which are not warranted by the maker to go above half an hour; about the time occupied by the Jew pedlar in deluding his country customer.
(188.) The practice, in retail linen-drapers' shops, of calling certain articles yard-wide when the real width is, perhaps, only seven-eighths or three-quarters, arose at first from fraud, which being detected, custom was pleaded in its defence: but the result is, that the vender is constantly obliged to measure the width
