The whole of the iron for the tubes was prepared at Birkenhead, but so well prepared that, in the centre tube, consisting of no less than 10,309 pieces, in which nearly half a million of holes were punched, not one plate required alteration, neither was there a plate punched wrong. The faculty of invention, however, was developed in the British engineers and workmen by the air of the New World. A steam-traveller was made and sent out by one of the most eminent firms in England, after two years of experiments and an outlay of some thousands of pounds, which would never do much more than move itself about, and at last had to be laid aside as useless. But the same descriptions and drawings having been shown to Mr. Chaffey, one of the sub-contractors, who "had been in Canada a sufficient length of time to free his genius from the cramped ideas of early life," a rough and ugly machine was constructed, which was soon working well. The same increase of inventiveness, according to Mr. Hodges, was visible in the ordinary workman, when transferred from the perfect but mechanical and cramping routine of British industry, to a country where he has to mix trades and turn his hands to all kinds of work. "In England he is a machine, but as soon as he gets out to the United States he becomes an intellectual being." Comparing the German with the British mechanic, Mr. Hodges says, "I do not think that a German is a better man than an Englishman; but I draw this distinction between them, that when a German leaves school he begins to educate himself, but the Englishman does not, for, as soon as he casts off the thraldom of school, he learns nothing more unless he is forced to do it, and if he is forced to do it, he will then beat the German. An Englishman acts well when he is put under compulsion by circumstances."