Root was a great superintendent, and the phenomenal success of the Colt factory was due in a marked degree to him.

He became president of the company after Colt's death in 1862, and under him were trained a large number of mechanics and inventors of new machine tools, who afterwards became celebrated leaders and officers in the industrial armies of the country.
The spectacular rise of the Colt factory at Hartford drew the attention of the British Government, and in 1854 Colt was invited to appear in London before a Parliamentary Committee on Small Arms.

He lectured the members of the committee as if they had been school boys, telling them that the regular British gun was so bad that he would be ashamed to have it come from his shop.

Speaking of a plant which he had opened in London the year before he criticized the supposedly skilled British mechanic, saying: "I began here by employing the highest-priced men that I could find to do difficult things, but I had to remove the whole of these high-priced men.

Then I tried the cheapest I could find, and the more ignorant a man was, the more brains he had for my purpose; and the result was this: I had men now in my employ that I started with at two shillings a day, and in one short year I can not spare them at eight shillings a day."* Colt's audacity, however, did not offend the members of the committee and they decided to visit his American factory at Hartford.