His employer was so well pleased with the success of his young collector that he offered to give him a place in the factory, saying there would always be plenty of rough work at which an inexperienced hand could employ himself.  “I could refuse no proposition that promised me bread and clothes,” said he, “for I was often walking the streets hungry, with my arms pressed close to my sides to conceal the holes in my coat sleeves.”  His first task was to thin down with a file some brass plates which were to be used as parts of the stops of an organ.  Powers was expected to do merely the rough work, after which the plates were to pass into the hands of the regular finisher.  His employer, knowing that the task was one which would require time, told him he would look in in a few days, and see how he had succeeded.  The young man’s mechanical talent, on which he had prided himself when a boy in Vermont, now did him good service, and he applied himself to his task with skill and determination.  When his employer asked for the plates, he was astonished to find that Powers had not only done the rough work, but had finished them much better than the regular finisher had ever done, and this merely by his greater nicety of eye and his undaunted energy.  He had blistered his hands terribly, but had done his work well.  His employer was delighted, and, finding him so valuable an assistant, soon gave him the superintendence of all his machinery, and took him to live in his own family.

As has been stated, his employer’s business was the manufacture of organs and clocks.  Powers displayed great skill in the management of the mechanical department of the business, and this, added to the favor shown him by the “boss,” drew upon him the jealousy of the other workmen.  There hung in the shop at this time an old silver bull’s-eye watch, a good time-piece, but very clumsy and ungainly in appearance.  Powers was anxious to become its owner.  Being too poor to buy it, he hit upon the following expedient for obtaining it.  He had carefully studied the machine used in the shop for cutting out wooden clock wheels, and had suggested to his employer several improvements in it.  The workmen, however, had ridiculed his suggestions, and had denounced as the most barefaced presumption his belief that he could improve a machine which had come all the way from Connecticut, where, they said, people were supposed to know something about clocks.  Nevertheless, he maintained his opinions, and told his employer that if he would give him the silver watch, he would invent a much better machine.  His offer was accepted, and in ten days he produced a machine, not only much simpler than the old one, but capable of performing twice as much and better work.  The workmen promptly acknowledged his success, and his employer gave him the watch.  “The old watch,” said he, a few years ago, “has ticked all my children into existence, and three of them out of this world.  It still hangs at the head of my bed.”