Chapter 34

E. D. Leavitt

Some time previous to these events, Mr. Merrick had done a very high-handed thing. Assuming supreme power as president of the company, he had invaded my department, and, without a word to me, had appointed over Mr. Goodfellow a superintendent to suit himself, reducing Mr. Goodfellow to be general foreman of the machine-shop, to take his orders from the new superintendent and not from me, whereupon Mr. Goodfellow resigned, and accepted a position as master mechanic in the Pennsylvania Steel Works, and by his advice the engine ordered by them from me was taken from the Southwark Foundry in its incomplete condition and finished by themselves under Mr. Goodfellow’s direction. Mr. Merrick then filled Mr. Goodfellow’s place with another friend of his own as general foreman, a man who would have been as valuable as a stick of wood but for his incessant blunders. I was fully alive to the arbitrary nature of this usurpation, but was entirely helpless, knowing perfectly well that the directors would sustain the president in whatever he did.

With the coming of the new superintendent, the fatal change took place. He came, first of all, full of the superiority of Philadelphia mechanics, and, second, feeling that in the nature of things I must be entirely ignorant of anything mechanical. I was nothingbut a New York lawyer; never did a day’s work in a shop in my life; had gone into a business I was not educated to and knew nothing about. My presuming to give orders to mechanics, and Philadelphia mechanics too, filled him with indignation. He would not take an order from me—perish the thought—and as for my drawings, he would depart from them as much as he liked.

All this appeared by degrees. I observed on the floor several cylinders fitted up, in which the followers for the piston-rod stuffing-boxes were made sliding fits on the rods. I asked him why he had made them in this way when they were drawn and figured to be bored ¹⁄₃₂ inch larger than the rod. He replied, “Because this is the way they ought to be.” I told him every one of them would be fired before the engine had run an hour; that I wanted him to bore those followers to the drawings, as well as the cylinder heads back of the stuffing-boxes. “It shall be done, sir,” said he. On examining them after this had been done, I found he had turned as much off from the outside of the followers as he had bored out of the hole. I asked him why he had done that. He said he supposed if I wanted the inside to be loose, I wanted the outside to be loose too. I told him I did not. He asked me why. I told him he was not there to argue with me; I wanted him to throw those followers away and make new ones precisely to the drawings, and I saw to it myself that it was done. I went to Mr. Merrick about this matter, and can the reader imagine what his reply was? “My advice to you, Mr. Porter, is to leave all such matters to the superintendent.” Think of it; an amateur president assuming the direction of my business, and giving such advice to me, who never had left the least thing to anybody, and without considering the fact that the action of his superintendent would be ruinous, except for my interference. I realized that I was absolutely alone, but I felt very much like fighting the whole world. The above incident is a fair sample of my constant experience. I was on the watch all the time. Many times I required the work to be done over when the superintendent departed from my drawings, and in doing it over he generally contrived to ruin the job, and would say, “Just according to your orders, sir.” I was reminded of a story told of Dr. Beman, a minister of Troy, N. Y., whose wife was peculiar, to say the least. On a certain occasion the presbytery met in Troy, and one evening he invited its members to his house, and told his wife to provide just a light supper. When they were ushered into the supper-room there was nothing on the table but lighted candles. “A light supper,” said she, “just as you ordered, sir.”

Samuel T. Wellman

I proposed to appoint an inspector to represent me. The general foreman said if an inspector were appointed he should resign, and Mr. Merrick forbade it. Was ever a man in so helpless and ridiculous a position?

Engine diagramsFebruary 2ndPorter-Allen Engine—40×48Otis Iron and Steel Co.93 Rev.}Cleveland,84 Lbs.April 14, 1882

February 2ndPorter-Allen Engine—40×48Otis Iron and Steel Co.93 Rev.}Cleveland,84 Lbs.April 14, 1882

February 2nd

Porter-Allen Engine—40×48Otis Iron and Steel Co.93 Rev.}Cleveland,84 Lbs.April 14, 1882

The second of the large engines which I finished was for the Otis Steel Works. I went to Cleveland myself to start the engine and found that Mr. Wellman, the general manager, had it running already. Mr. Otis, the president, was very much pleased with it, and well he might be. This was the first mill to roll plates from the ingot to the finish without reheating. These were the kind ofdiagramsit made. It will be observed that these were taken at different times and under different pressures. Unfortunately the right hand one is the only diagram I have from the crank end of the cylinder. In rolling these heavy plates the changes were made instantaneously from full load to nothing and from nothing to full load. The engine made 93 revolutions per minute, and it will be seen that the changes were made by the governor in a third of a second or less, the speed not varying sensibly. Mr. Otis said to me: “Oh, Mr. Porter, what shall I do with you? You cannot imagine the loss I have suffered from your delay in furnishing this engine.” I said: “Mr. Otis, you know the terrible time I have had, and that I have done the very best I could.” “Yes,” he said, “I know all about it.” Hehad, in fact, been to Philadelphia and seen for himself. He added: “You make a small engine suitable for electric lights; what is the price of an engine maintaining twenty-five arc lights?” I told him $1050. “Well,” said he, “you strike off the odd fifty and let me have one for a thousand dollars, and we will call it square,” so I had some sunshine on my way. I present aportraitof this just man. The engine is now running as good as new after twenty-five years, and the company five or six years afterwards put in another 48×66-inch to drive a still larger train.

I had a funny experience at the Cambria Works which has always seemed to me to have been prophetic. In August, 1881, the Society of Mechanical Engineers held a meeting in Altoona, and the Pennsylvania Railroad Company gave us an excursion to Johnstown to visit the works of the Cambria Company. The anticipations of the members were expressed by Jackson Bailey, then the editor of theAmerican Machinist. As I was going through a car in which he was seated he called out to me, “This is your day, Porter.” The party was taken in charge by Mr. Morrell, the general manager. Our route took us first to their new blast-furnaces, where considerable time was spent in examining their new and interesting features. Next we came to my second engine, started some two months before. The engine was just being slowed down; we were told there were not yet furnaces enough to keep the train running continuously, so they were shut down from half an hour to an hour between heats, and a heat had just been run off. We went next to see my rail-mill engine, which had raised the output of that mill 150 per cent. That too had been shut down. They had just broken a roll, a most rare accident and one which I had never before seen or heard of there. “Well, gentlemen,” said I, “at any rate I can show you my engine driving a cold saw.” Arrived at the spot, we found that all still, and were told that sawing cold rails was not a continuous operation, we had hit upon the noon hour, and the men had gone to their dinner. That was the end of the show, as far as I was concerned. The Gautier Works were a mile away and were not included in our visit, so we were entertained with the great blooming-mill in operation and the casting of the enormous ingots for it, and after the customary luncheon and speeches we returned to Altoona.

Charles A. Otis

One day the superintendent came into the office and told me he had tried my machine for facing nuts and it would not work. I felt disappointed, because I had confidence in it. I went out to see what the matter was, and at a glance I saw that it had been ingeniously arranged not to work. The feed had been made rapid and the cutting motion very slow, so that the tools could not take their cuts and the slow-moving belt ran off the pulleys. I did not reduce the feed-motion, but increased the speed of the cutters and the belt some eight or ten-fold, when the trouble vanished. I never knew anything to work better than that tool did.

Porter-Allen Engine 40″×48″ #207Dash pot for Governor.

The burning anxiety of the superintendent was to show up my ignorance. A first-rate chance to do so soon seemed to present itself. The counterpoise of the governor of the Otis engine dropped instantly to its seat when a plate struck the rolls and as instantly rose to the top of its range of action when it left them. This made a noisy blow which was disagreeable and might in time cause an accident. Mr.Wellman sent me a sketch of a device he had thought of for arresting this motion by air-cushions. I told the superintendent to have that apparatus made and make the air-cushions four inches in diameter. He said four inches diameter would not answer; they must be eight inches. “No,” said I, “four inches diameter is ample; make them four inches.” A few days after he called me into the shop to try my four-inch air-cushions. I found the apparatus secured in a vise in a vertical position. I took hold of the lever and lifted the piston; it met with no resistance until it struck sharply against the end of the chamber. For a moment I was stunned by the man’s audacity, and threw the piston up and down again to make sure it was not a dream. I then turned my back on the superintendent and called to a boy to find Mr. Fulmer, the foreman of the second floor, and tell him I wanted him here. In a moment he appeared, and I said to him: “Mr. Fulmer, I want you to make a new piston for this apparatus and make it a proper fit; you understand.” Mr. Fulmer bowed assent. I added: “There will be time to-day to get it into the sand, and it can be finished early to-morrow. When it is ready for my inspection come yourself to the office and let me know.” About the middle of the next forenoon Mr. Fulmer called for me. I went in and found the piston arrested at each end of its motion by a perfect air-cushion. “All right,” said I, “see that it is shipped to-day.”

Mr. Fulmer was an excellent mechanic and a man of good general intelligence; he would have made the piston a proper fit in the first place if he had not been expressly ordered to make it loose and useless. The superintendent, on his persistent assumption that I was a fool, had actually expected me to say when I tried the apparatus: “Oh, I see, four inches diameter will not do. You will have to make it eight.”

Some time in 1881 or 1882 I had a queer experience with an engine for the New York Post Office. It was to take the place of an engine then running. The engineer of the Post Office informed me that this engine had a cylinder twelve inches in diameter. I told him it looked to me from the external dimensions that the diameter must be fourteen inches and asked him to take off the back head and measure it for me. He wrote me a few days after that he found that he could not get the back head off, but I might rely upon it being twelve inches. So I did rely upon it being fourteen inches, furnished an engine accordingly, and found it to be the size needed.

Daniel J. Morrell

Some time after the engine was started I received a line from the Postmaster saying they were much disappointed in it. They expected a gain in economy, but they were burning more coal than before, also that the engine pounded badly. I went to New York to see what the matter was. The engine seemed to be working all right except for the knock, so I made my way down to the sub-cellar. There was nothing there but the boilers and the engineer’s desk. On the cellar stairs, after I had shut the door behind me, I heard a loud sound of escaping steam. The boilers were under the middle of the building; a four-inch steam-pipe ran from them a distance of about eighty feet, suspended from the ceiling, to a point under the engine, then turned up through the floor to the under side of the steam-chest. The exhaust pipe, of the same size, came from the engine through the floor and was carried parallel with the steam-pipe to the middle of the building and upward through the roof. The two pipes were about eighteen inches apart, and in the vertical portions under the ceiling they had been connected by a half-inch pipe having a globe valve in the middle of its length. The valve-stem was downward and the valve set wide open. The noise I heard was caused by the steam rushing through this pipe. I computed that about as much steam was being thus blown away as was used by the engine. My first impulse was to call upon the Postmaster and tell him what I had found, but I decided not to bother him. I could not reach the valve to close it, but discovered a box used for a step to an opening in the wall, so I brought that out and standing upon it was able to close the valve; then the noise ceased and I put the box back.

There was no one in the cellar but a boy firing the boilers. I asked him if he knew who put that pipe there. He knew nothing about it, but supposed our men put it there when they set up the engine. I hunted up the engineer and asked him the same question, and got the same answer. I went to the people who did the engineering work for the Post Office and who had put in the pipes; they knew nothing about it. I could find out nothing,but had to content myself with telling the engineer that I had closed the valve and relied upon him to keep it closed. I asked him what he thought caused the thump in the engine; he said he had not the slightest idea, but he would try to cure it. I contented myself with writing to the Postmaster that I had removed the cause of the waste of steam and hoped he would now find the engine satisfactory. Soon after Mr. Merrick was in New York for two or three days. When he came home he said: “I have cured the thump in that Post Office engine.” “How did you do it?” I asked. He replied: “I gave the engineer a twenty-dollar gold piece, and when I went to see it the next morning the thump was gone.” I should add that when the old engine was taken down I had the back cylinder head removed, which was done without difficulty, and found the diameter fourteen inches. “For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain” this engineer was “peculiar” in my experience.

I had brought with me from Newark an order from the Willimantic Linen Company, who were manufacturers of cotton thread, for two engines for quite an interesting application. They were building a new mill entirely unique in its design, which has never been repeated, being an ignorant freak. It was a one-story mill 800 feet long and 250 or 300 feet wide, intended to contain five lines of shafting. Each line was independent and drove the machinery for all the successive operations from opening the cotton bales to packing the spools of thread. These lines of shafting 800 feet long were to be in the basement and to drive these machines by belts through the floor, the engine to be in the middle of each line. For this purpose I supplied a pair of condensing engines, 11 inches diameter of cylinder and 16 inches stroke, making 350 revolutions per minute, with their cranks set at right angles with each other in the line of shafting. These required no fly-wheel and would start from any position. I had a great deal of trouble with this order on account of the delay in its execution, so much so that before the first engine was finished the order for the second one was countermanded, and this order was placed with the Hartford Engineering Company, a new concern which was foolish enough to undertake the same speed. However, after my first engine was started they found themselves face to face with an impossibilityand had to throw up their contract, whereupon the president of the company became very civil and asked me to be kind enough to make the second engine for them, which I was quite happy to do, as I had on hand the peculiar bed for these engines, which I did not break up after the order was countermanded, but had it set up against the wall of the shop in readiness for what might happen. These two engines were both in successful operation when my own operations ceased; the remaining three engines were to be added as their business required.

The engineer of that company was an original investigator. He had a battery of return-tubular boilers, each one crammed full of tubes according to the usual methods of boiler-makers. He provided himself with pieces of lath one inch wide, one eighth of an inch thick, and four inches long, and laid one in the front end of each tube in one of his boilers and left them there for twenty-four hours. He had made a diagram of his boiler on which he numbered every tube and put a corresponding number on every piece of lath. In taking them out they presented an astonishing revelation, which he showed me. Some of the pieces were burned almost to a coal and some were scarcely discolored, while the great body of them presented various effects of heat between these extremes. These showed distinctly the enormous differences in the temperature of the gases passing through the different tubes, and that fully one half of the tubes did little or no work in evaporating the water. They taught a lesson which boiler-makers, who count every additional tube they can get into a boiler as so much added heating surface and rate their boilers accordingly, have no anxiety to learn, but which I afterwards turned to good account, as will be seen.

About the last and the most interesting engine that I built while in Philadelphia was one for the firm of Cheney Brothers, silk-manufacturers, of South Manchester, Conn. This was a cross-compound, the first and the last compound engine that I ever built, and it is the only engine in this country to which I applied my condenser. The cylinders were 12 and 21 inches in diameter, the stroke 24 inches, and the shaft made 180 revolutions per minute. The condenser presented a new design in one respect; the air-pump was double-acting and made only 45 double strokes per minute, beingdriven by a belt from the engine shaft and the motion reduced by gears 1 to 4. This engine ran perfectly from the start, and I looked forward with confidence to a demand for many more of the same type. Thediagramsmade by it are here reproduced.

Scale, 1″ = 32 Lbs.AtmosphereScale, 1″ = 16 Lbs.AtmosphereDiagrams from my First and Only Compound Engine.

Scale, 1″ = 32 Lbs.AtmosphereScale, 1″ = 16 Lbs.Atmosphere

Scale, 1″ = 32 Lbs.

Atmosphere

Scale, 1″ = 16 Lbs.

Atmosphere

Diagrams from my First and Only Compound Engine.

I have a pleasant memory connected with this engine. The silk-mill is located in a very large park, scattered about which are the residences of different members of the family. About twelve years after the engine was built, in company with my wife, I was visiting relatives in Hartford, from which South Manchester is about twelve miles distant. One day we were driven over there with our friends to make a social call. On our arrival I left the party to make a visit to my old engine. The mill seemed to have been changed very much, and I lost my way. Finally I recognized, as I thought, the old engine-room and went in. My engine was not there, but in its place stood another engine, a pair of tandem compoundsof much larger dimensions. These had evidently just been erected, as they stood idle. “Oh, dear,” said I to myself, “my engines have been superseded for some reason or other.” While I was indulging in that reflection the engineer came in. I introduced myself and said to him: “I see that my old engines have been supplanted.” “Oh, no,” said he, “your engines are all right; they are running just where they always have been. They have built a new mill twice as large as the old one, and your engines have been giving such satisfaction they have ordered another pair of compounds from the Southwark Foundry, and these are the engines; they have not been started yet, as the mill is not ready for them and won’t be for a month.”

He directed me to the old engine-room, where I found my engines gliding away as though they had been erected yesterday. At that time I regarded these engines as only a stepping-stone to far higher things. I was engaged on a plan for a great development of the high speed system, but which has not materialized. I still consider it as on the whole superior to the turbine, a superiority, however, which may never be established.

In the spring of 1881, in our anxiety to revive the manufacture of the engine, we were foolish enough to send one to the Atlanta exhibition. We eagerly believed the promises of the agent that we should find all the machinery that we wanted to drive, and sent an engine finished with great care, and a skillful man to erect and run it. We also printed the heading of a lot of diagrams, to be given to visitors. The facts were found to be that we had nothing to drive but an idle line of shafting and one Clark’s spool-winder, while the exhaust main was so small and choked with the exhausts from other engines that we had a back pressure of ten pounds above the atmosphere; so we could take no diagrams; and the fact that we did not take any was used as a conclusive argument against high-speed engines; so the exhibition did us harm instead of good.

I pass over other distressing experiences at the works, and come at once to the final catastrophy in the late fall of 1882.

Another exhibition opened in the fall of 1882, for which I made great preparations, and from which I anticipated important results. This was the exhibition of the New England Manufacturers’ andMechanics’ Institute, held in Boston. I obtained an important allotment of space with plenty of machinery to drive, and, besides a fine engine, sent a large exhibit of our finished work, in the parts of several sizes of engines, expecting to attract the attention of all New England manufacturers. I prepared for a regular campaign. I rented an office and engaged a young man to represent us in Boston as our agent, and another, Mr. Edwin F. Williams, to travel and solicit orders and take the charge of erecting engines. Our engine arrived without a piston. Mr. Merrick had thought he had found a defect in the piston, and ordered another one to be made. When we came to put the engine together in the exhibition, this piston would not enter the cylinder. On examination it was found to have been turned conical, the bases of the two cones meeting in the middle, so the middle was one eighth of an inch larger in diameter than the faces. We had to get a coarse file and file down the middle of the piston all around until it would enter the cylinder. Then I had a great disappointment—the greatest I ever experienced—the engine thumped badly on both centers. The only way in which we could stop the thumping was by shutting off the steam until the initial pressure was brought down to the height reached by the compression of the exhaust. In this plight we had to run through the exhibition. We could not take a diagram and had to watch the engine constantly, for whenever the pressure rose ever so little too high in the cylinder it would begin to thump. I attributed this to the shocking condition of the surface of the piston. I could not comprehend how this should cause the thump, but it must be that, for I could conceive of nothing else that could produce it. This thump made my exhibition a total failure, and necessitated the abandonment of all my plans.

At the close of the exhibition I went home utterly discouraged. When I went into the shop the first person I met was the foreman of the lower floor, where the engine had been built. I told him of the plight in which I found myself placed and to which I attributed my failure. The fellow gave me the lie direct, saying with a conceited smirk: “It is impossible, Mr. Porter, that any such work as you have described can have gone out of this establishment.” I turned on my heel and left him, and in less than half a minuteI saw at a distance of fifty feet a 22-inch piston being finished for an engine we were building for the Tremont and Suffolk Mill. The workman had finished turning the piston and was then cutting the grooves for the rings. The reflection from the surface showed me the same two cones meeting in the middle. I went up to the lathe, the back side of which was toward me, and told the workman to stop his lathe and bring me a straight-edge. This rocked on the edge in the middle of the piston, opening nearly one eighth of an inch on each face alternately. I sent a boy to find the foreman and asked him what he thought of that and left him. I had influence enough to have both the foreman and the workman discharged that night. Think of it; superintendent, general foreman, the foreman of the floor, and workman, altogether, never saw what I detected at a glance from the opposite side of the shop.

I want to stop here to express my disgust with the American system of making the tailstock of a lathe adjustable, which enables either an ignorant, careless or malicious workman to ruin his work after this fashion. To their credit, English tools have no such feature.

The very next day we received a call from Mr. Bishop, the engineer of the works of Russell & Irwin at New Britain, Conn., to tell us that their engine just put in by us had a very bad thump which he was afraid could not be cured as it was evidently caused by the piston projecting over the admission ports when at the end of its stroke. “Impossible,” I exclaimed; “I never made such an engine in my life.” I should here state that in experimenting with the first little engine that I made before I went to England, I at first made the piston project over the port one quarter of an inch, and the engine thumped. I satisfied myself that this was caused by the impact of the entering steam against the projecting surface of the piston, driving it against the opposite side of the cylinder; this was aggravated in high-speed engines. In this case the engine made 160 revolutions per minute and the steam was admitted through four simultaneous openings, so it entered the cylinder with great velocity. I turned a quarter of an inch off from each face of the piston, and the thump disappeared. I then made it a law from which I never varied, that the pistonshould come to the admission port and not project over it at all, and this feature was shown in every drawing.

Mr. Bishop replied to me: “It does project, Mr. Porter; it projects seven eighths of an inch over the port at each end of its stroke, for I have measured it.” I rushed up to the drawing-office and called for the horizontal sectional drawing of that cylinder, and there I saw the piston not only drawn, but figured—projecting seven eighths of an inch over the port. I felt as though I were sinking through the floor. That was what had ruined my Boston exhibition and sent me home disgraced and broken-hearted and the badly fitting piston, shameful as that was, had nothing to do with it. The first question that occurred to me was: “How came this drawing to exist and I to know nothing about it?” The answer to this question was simple.

When the first pair of Willimantic engines was started I was disappointed in their economy, and made up my mind that the excessive waste room was accountable for it. The proportion of cross-section area to the stroke being fifty per cent. greater than in my table of sizes increased in the same degree the proportion of waste room to the piston displacement. I felt that there was need here for improvement. By far the greatest amount of waste room was in the exhaust ports. I accepted a modification of the exhaust valves by which this item of the waste room was reduced fully one half and made a new pair of cylinders for this engine. The improvement in the economy was so marked that I determined to change the exhaust valves of all the engines. Only the exhaust valves and ports needed to be changed. These were drawn anew in pencil and carefully studied and approved of by me. It was necessary that the entire combined cylinder drawing should be retraced, but this, except only the exhaust ports and valves, was to be copied over the existing tracings. This did not require my attention, and I gave no thought to it. Here was the superintendent’s opportunity. In copying these tracings he had only to move the straight line representing each face of the piston on the longitudinal section of the cylinder seven eighths of an inch, thus adding this amount to the piston at each end, and shorten the cylinder heads to correspond, and the job was done; and there did not exist among the large number of persons in the drawing-office and shop whomust have been aware of this change, loyalty enough to let me know anything about it.

We had also recently finished two engines for the Cocheco Mill at Dover, N. H., and about this time we received a letter from the superintendent of that mill expressing his admiration of the engines in every other respect, but complaining of a bad thump in the cylinders. He said he would be glad to invite the superintendents of other mills to see them, but he could not show the engines to anybody until that thump was cured.

I went directly to the president and demanded authority to change the pistons and heads of these engines. To my astonishment he refused point-blank, saying he had spent money enough on these alterations, and he would not spend another cent. I replied to him that there was one other alternative and that was to abandon the business, to which he made no reply. But why did I need to go to the president; why not make these changes myself? The answer to this question is very humiliating to me. An account had been made up of the cost of the alterations here described and presented to the board of directors, showing this to amount to $20,000. I was aghast at this statement; I had never seen a figure pertaining to the business, except the single bill already mentioned. I told the directors that any good pattern-maker would have taken the contract to alter those exhaust valves and ports on our twenty sizes of cylinders for an average price of fifty dollars each, and made a profit of fifty per cent. in doing it. The cost of the new drawings and the price of cylinders for the Willimantic engine could not more than double this sum, and by some hocus-pocus this $2000 had been changed to $20,000; probably by transfer from other losing accounts. The president replied that was the cost of the alterations as it appeared on the books, and the directors, without making any investigation, adopted a resolution that no further alterations should be made unless expressly ordered by the president.

I did not believe that in making this addition to the length of the piston the superintendent had any intention to wreck the business. He could have had no idea of its fatal nature; his only thought was to make a considerable further reduction of waste room and gratify his itching to change my drawings. But of course doing this without my knowledge was criminal, and shouldhave caused his instant discharge; but his whole conduct from the beginning had been the same and the president had sustained him. I had no opportunity to pursue this matter further.

On receiving the president’s refusal I determined to appeal to the directors, but first I thought I would lay the matter before Mr. Henry Lewis, whom I regarded as the most open-minded of all. What was my amazement when, after listening to my statement, he replied: “We shall sustain the president, Mr. Porter.” Then I knew the end had come. It was idle for me to butt against the Philadelphia phalanx. A day or two after a committee of the directors headed by Mr. Shortridge, called at the office and asked to see our order book. This showed that in more than a month preceding we had not received a single order. On this state of affairs it was evident to the directors that a change must be made in the management. I had long realized that the great gulf that I had dug between the stockholders and myself, as already described, had never been filled. Neither the directors as a body, except on the single occasion already mentioned, nor any director individually, had ever conferred with me on any subject whatever. They knew nothing, except what they might have learned from the president; he had no mechanical knowledge or ability to form a mechanical judgment, and the superintendent influenced him in a degree which to me was unaccountable. His want of comprehension of the business was shown in his answer to the life-or-death question which I had presented to him. The next day I received a communication from the directors requesting me to send in my resignation, which I promptly did. Mr. Merrick was also requested to resign. This was evidently a put up job, to let me down easy. Mr. Merrick had for some time expressed a wish to be relieved from his position which he found very uncomfortable.

The directors elected as president one of their own number, who had nothing else to do, to sit in the president’s chair and draw his salary, and committed the practical management of the business to an oily-tongued man who had never seen a high-speed engine, and whose qualifications for the position were that he was a friend of one of the directors and was a Philadelphian, and who I learned received a large bonus for leaving his own business and accepting the position vacated by me.

Benjamin F. Avery

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