On August 27th -- fourteen days after the publication of my Cheltenham paper in The Times -- we were visited in the afternoon by Mr. H. A. Bruce (afterwards Lord Aberdare) and Mr. George Clark, trustees of the great Dowlais Iron Works. We said that we were sorry that the experiments were over for the day, but we should be happy to show them on the morrow. "Oh," said these gentlemen, "We do not care about seeing the process, for our chemist (Mr. E. Riley), on reading your paper in The Times, extemporised a converting furnace in one of the sheds, had the blast conveyed from our blast-furnace engines, and tried the experiment; the object of our visit is to treat for a license. We want to make 70,000 tons of malleable iron per annum." They were a good deal disconcerted on hearing our terms, and after much discussion it was arranged that we should dine with them that evening at the Tavistock Hotel, and further talk the matter over. This discussion resulted in their agreement to pay us £10,000 for a license under which they should be at liberty to make 20,000 tons of malleable iron per annum, at a royalty of one farthing per ton, during the whole duration of the patent. A memorandum to this effect was drawn up and signed as soon as dinner was over; and, when all was thus settled to our mutual satisfaction, our first licensees returned to Dowlais. It was exceedingly satisfactory to us that these gentlemen should have spontaneously made their own experiments in private, and satisfied themselves of the practicability of the process by the aid of their own chemist and workmen; and, on the strength of the results so obtained, should have come up in haste to London to secure a license for their works, lest the right should pass into other hands. This circumstance gave us great assurance of the practicability of the invention which, everyone knew, had at that time never been commercially carried out at any iron works. Hence the purchase of a licence to work the new process was simply a mercantile speculation in which the purchaser, who paid £10,000 down, stood to save, during twelve years, £120,000, less £125 paid in farthings. The inventor, on the other hand, had the advantage of ready cash to cover the risks he himself had run in expending two years of labour, in bearing the costs of constructing apparatus, taking out patents, and making expensive experiments at a time when the whole scheme was purely ideal, and the risks were much larger to him than they were to those who now speculated on his success.

This sale of licenses for the whole term of the patents made the licensees firm supporters of the patents, while the advantage given to one manufacturer in each of the great iron districts was not calculated to injure the trade, as the owner of the privilege would put the extra profits in his pocket, instead of throwing away his advantage by underselling his neighbours. For instance, the Dowlais Iron Company were making 70,000 tons of rolled iron annually, and would have to pay a full royalty on 50,000 tons, thus reducing their advantage to less than three shillings per ton on their annual production of iron, a sum too small to permit of their underselling the rest of the trade. This was, then, the scheme by which I proposed to force my invention into commercial use, in face of the gigantic vested interests arrayed against it.

Soon after the departure of the Dowlais licensees, two gentlemen from Scotland had a close run as to who should arrive first, and so claim the advantage of being the pioneer for Scotland. This claim was eventually settled in favour of Mr. Smith Dixon, of the Govan Iron Works, Glasgow, who paid £10,000 for a license to make 20,000 tons of iron annually at a royalty of one farthing per ton. This was followed by a license to the Butterley Iron Company, in Derbyshire, to make 10,000 tons annually on the same terms. A license was also granted to make 4000 tons annually to a tin-plate manufacturer in Wales, at one farthing per ton, on payment of one year's royalty of £2000, thus making sales of royalties to the amount of £27,000 in less than one month from the announcement of my invention in The Times. Up to this period, and long after it, the only persons interested were the ironmasters, the question not making the smallest impression in the steel trade. Sheffield wrapped itself in absolute security, and believed that it could afford to laugh at the absurd notion of making five tons of cast steel from pig-iron in twenty or thirty minutes, when by its own system fourteen or fifteen days and nights were required to obtain a 40- lb. or 50-lb. crucible of cast steel from pig-iron. So the Yorkshire town was allowed to stand aside while the more enterprising ironmaster gave the invention a trial, as far as bar-iron making was concerned. At this period the ironmaster would never have dreamed of changing his trade to that of a cast-steel manufacturer, had such a thing been proposed to him.

Among the many persons who called on me from time to time, and made proposals for a license, none was so energetic and thoroughgoing as Mr. Thos. Brown, of the Ebbw Vale Ironworks. He brought with