A couple of hours later he sent for me, and told me this. “I have been all around the works and seen all that is doing. It is all of the same piece. I have had a long interview with Mr. Widdowson, and am sorry to tell you that we can’t make your engine; we don’t know how. It seems to be entirely out of our line. The intelligence does not exist in these works to make a steam-engine. Nobody knows how to set about anything. I have stopped the work, and want to know what you think had better be done about it?” I asked him to let me think the matter over till the next morning. I then went to him and suggested to him to let me find a skilled locomotive-erecter who was also a trained draftsman, and to organize a separate department for the engine and governor manufacture, and put this man at the head of it, to direct it without interference. This was gladly agreed to. I found a young man, Mr. John Watts, who proved to be the very man for the place. In a week we were running under Mr. Watts’ direction, and the engine was saved. But what a time the poor man had! Everything seemed to be done wrong. It is hardly to be believed. He could not get a rod turned round, or a hole bored round. In their toolmaking they relied entirely on grinding with “Turkey dust.” I once saw a gang of a dozen laborers working a long grinding-bar, in the bore, 10 inches diameter by 8 feet long, in the tailstock of an enormous lathe. I peered through this hole when the bar was withdrawn. It looked like a ploughed field. Scattered over it here and there were projections which had been ground off by these laborers. On the other hand, the planing done in these works was magnificent. I never saw anything to equal it. But circular work beat them entirely. I found that the lathe hands never thought of such a thing as getting any truth by the sliding cut. After that they went for the surface with coarse files, and relied for such approximate truth as they did get upon grinding with the everlasting Turkey dust.