Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1896 — WATCHES. [ARTICLE]

WATCHES.

Some Facts Concerning the Styles—Th» Great Number of Watches Used. In this country almost everybody carries a watch. Probably nine-tenths of the men. apd great numbers of wravn, and many young people carry watches. In the best trade of the city many more watches of gold are sold than of silver; of all the watches sold i hroughbut the country about 25 per cent are of gold. The percentage o' gold watches is increasing. The fashionable watch of the day isopen faced. The sale of open-faced watches is increasing, -speSally in line watches, but it is increasing also ij w’atches of other grades. Of fine watches sold in this city probably twothirds are now made open faced. Of all the watches sold in the United States, gold and silver, probably from a quarter to a third are now* made open faced. The modern watch has for one of its characteristics thinness. A man’s watch, which is now made more especially to wear with evening dress and is all the time growing in favor, is a plain, thin, open-faced gold watch which takes up but little room in the pocket. Perfect in its simplicity, this watch is at the same time of fine workmanship and great beauty. It sells at $l9O. A gold watch not so thin nor so finely finished, but a very handsome modern watch and an excellent timekeeper, by the same makers and bearing their name can be bought in open face, the case of 18 carat gold, for $65; in double case for S7O. But gold watches and good watches, too, can be bought for very much less than these prices; in fact there never was a time when watches generally were made in such tasteful shapes, or when they were so good for the money, or so cheap as now. Taking all the grades together, the American production of watches is about 4,000 daily: the importation of watches amounts to about the same number. One might at first wonder what becomes of all these watches. A great number are taken up annually, by the new buyers coming into the market for the first time, out of the constant and large increase in the population. Great as the percentage of watch owners now is in this country, that also is increasing. Many immigrants buy watches as soon as they get the money; some men own more than one watch; watches wear out, or their owners lay them aside for a better watch or for one of the newer style: watches are lost and destroyed; and when one comes to take all these things into consideration It will be seen lhat the great production of watches may be in large measure easily acounted for.—New York Sun. In Massaloupa, a mountain resort of Japan, there is a spring of blood-heat temperature. Some of the visitors remain in this water for a whole month with a stone on their knees to keep them from turning over in their