By 1900, the production of Black Forest clocks shifted from the cottage to small factories employing hundreds of semi-skilled laborers. They produced the entire clock in-house with their own sawmill, foundry and machine shop. Some continued to produce inexpensive clocks with wood plate frames in large numbers in addition to movements with cast brass plates and steel pillars. The Junghans family sent a brother, Xavier, to America to learn production techniques used in the Connecticut factories. He returned with ideas and plans that enabled Junghans to build clock movements using stamped brass plates and gear wheels instead of brass castings.

A Junghans family business disagreement resulted in the formation of a rival clock factory, the Hamberg-American Clock Company. Both Junghans and Hamburg-American produced hundreds of different styles of clock cases in a competitive race. The Junghans logo, simply a star enclosing the letter "J" and the Hamburg-American logo of crossed arrows is seen on thousands of mass prooduced clocks from the Black Forest factories.

The example here is an unusually small 8-day running style, known as a "free swinger" by the Hamburg-American Company.