The first governor order that was booked was the only case that ever beat me. I went to see the engine. It was a condensing beam-engine of good size, made by Ormerod, Grierson & Co. to maintain the vacuum in a tube connecting two telegraph offices in Manchester, and had been built to the plans and specifications of the telegraph company’s engineer. The engine had literally nothing to do. A little steam air-pump that two men could have lifted and set on a bench would have been just suitable for the work. They could not carry low enough pressure nor run slowly enough. On inspection I reported that we should have nothing to do with it. The custom of making whatever customers order and taking no responsibility was first illustrated to me in this curious way. I saw a queer-looking boiler being finished in the boiler-shop. In reply to my question the foreman told me they were making it for a cotton-spinner, according to a plan of his own. It consisted of two boilers, one within the other. The owner’s purpose was to carry the ordinary steam pressure in the outer boiler, and a pressure twice as great in the inner one, when the inner boiler would have to suffer the stress of only one half the pressure it was carrying. I asked the superintendent afterwards why they did not tell that man that he could not maintain steam at two different temperatures on the opposite sides of the same sheets. He replied: “Because we do not find it profitable to quarrel with our customers. That is his idea. If we had told him there was nothing in it, he would not have believed us, but would have got his boiler made somewhere else.” Perhaps the most curious experience I ever had was that of getting the governor into cotton-mills. There was a vast field all around us, and we looked for plenty of orders. This was the reception I met with every time. After listening to the winning story I had to tell, the cotton lord would wind up with this question: “Well, sir, have you got a governor in a large cotton-mill?” After my answer in the negative I was bowed out. I early got an order from Titus Salt & Son, of Saltaire, for two large governors but these did not weigh at all with a cotton-spinner; they made alpaca goods.