In Coventry there stood, wet and rusting in an old botanical conservatory, one of the finest of American watch-case tools, which some ambitious English watch-maker, in a fit of sanity, had taken over; but his men could not, or probably would not, use it. Yet a great cycle firm had just bought, and was using, one of the very finest Brown & Sharp lathes, merely, I suppose, to make sure that no Yankee should get the better of them in tools. This is not an admission on their part that all English tools are immature affairs; they need not admit anything of the kind, for among the number of tons of cast iron in a twelve-inch screw lathe which you see in every cycle shop, a small part of one ton, at least, is fixed to do some work, and accurate work at that. It was a fortunate thing for our mother country in the cycle business that it was clogged by no fettering precedents or mediæval rules of mechanics. The English cycle-makers are abreast of the times in their line, and there is no better illustration of the total absence of all effect of surroundings upon this great industry than the fact that the lightest cycles in the world are made with such ponderous tools. It must have been a great feat, in view of their proclivities for substantial machinery, to shave off the last superfluous ounce in a bicycle. In short, it has been impressed very forcibly on the writer’s mind that the famous Yankee ingenuity is simply unchained English genius. In our heated discussions as to whether the American manufacturer, with a higher rate of wages, could hold his own against the English without a discriminating tariff duty, there may be two sides in regard to watch-making and some other industries, but when applied to cycles it is nonsense to suppose that we could compete. As to American machines, that which would strike us as remarkable in the English would be, to a large extent, natural to our institutions; that all machine parts should be accurately made and be interchangeable would be taken for granted when coming from one of our factories, but it is a little odd to find it approached by others. The absolute regularity and similarity with which work is turned out by us is sometimes an objection; if a part is too hard or brittle, or in any way bad in its construction and form, a part for the same purpose, from the same factory, will be sure to be just like the one you want to replace; in fact, if you have one bad part, depend upon it there have been thousands made just like it, and you will be pretty certain to get one of them. It is generally conceded that the American maker is more careful to test his new plans before placing the product upon the market; anyhow, since the customer in this country is able to get to head-quarters more easily with his complaint, he generally favors buying at home, though it is often a very close contest in his mind just what to do.