Most of the threads I recall on using Governors boiled down to one word: Don't!
Or, "If you *must* use them, use them just to manage citizen mood."
Basically, use Governors to manage citizen mood if you are just learning the game, and/or later in the game when you are cruising to victory and have hundreds of cities to manage. When you first start playing, it can be easiest to use governors while you figure out how the rest of the game works. Then you take over managing your cities yourself, because humans are much better at it than the AI.
The same thing with Workers. Beginners may automate them, but they do many stupid things. Humans control them much better. For instance, Iin your earlier post you mentioned you had workers who were on un-roaded tiles. My first thought was, "why would you have a worker on an unroaded tile by the time Steam Power came along? Why do you have uroaded tiles, period?" A rule of thumb is: never move a worker off a tile until it has been roaded.
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