Watt had many annoyances of this sort to encounter, and one of his greatest difficulties was the incapacity and unsteadiness of his workmen. Although the original Soho men were among the best of their kind, the increasing business of the firm necessarily led to the introduction of a large number of new hands, who represented merely the average workmen of the day. They were for the most part poor mechanics, very inexpert at working in metal, and greatly given to drink.[154]
In organising the works at Soho, Boulton and Watt found it necessary to carry division of labour to the farthest practicable point. There were no slide-lathes, planing-machines, or boring-tools, such as now render mechanical accuracy of construction almost a matter of certainty. Everything depended upon the individual mechanic’s accuracy of hand and eye; and yet mechanics generally were then much less skilled than they are now. The way in which Boulton and Watt contrived partially to get over the difficulty was, to confine their workmen to special classes of work, and make them as expert in them as possible. By continued practice in handling the same tools and fabricating the same articles, they thus acquired great individual proficiency. “Without our tools and our workmen,” said Watt, “very little could be done.”
But when the men got well trained, the difficulty was to keep them. Foreign tempters were constantly trying to pick up Boulton and Watt’s men, and induce them by offers of larger wages to take service abroad. The two fitters sent up to London to erect the Bow engine were strongly pressed to go out to Russia.[155] There were also French agents in England at the same time, who tried to induce certain of Boulton and Watt’s men to go over to Paris and communicate the secret of making the new engines to M. Perrier, who had undertaken to pump water from the Seine for the supply of Paris. The German States also sent over emissaries with a like object, Baron Stein having been specially commissioned by his Government to master the secret of Watt’s engine—to obtain working plans of it and bring away workmen capable of making it,—the first step taken being to obtain access to the engine-rooms by bribing the workmen.
Besides the difficulties Boulton and Watt had to encounter in training and disciplining their own workmen, they had also to deal with the want of skill on the part of those to whom the working of their engines was intrusted after they had been delivered and fixed complete. They occasionally supplied trustworthy men of their own; but they could not educate mechanics fast enough, and needed all the best men for their own work. They were therefore compelled to rely on the average mechanics of the day, the greater part of whom were comparatively unskilled and knew nothing of the steam-engine. Hence such mishaps as those which befell the Bow engine, through the engineman getting drunk and reckless, as above described. To provide for this contingency Watt endeavoured to simplify the engine as much as possible, so as to bring its working and repair within the capacity of the average workman.
At a very early period, while experimenting at Kinneil, he had formed the idea of working steam expansively, and altered his model from time to time with that object. Boulton had taken up and continued the experiments at Soho, believing the principle to be sound and that great economy would attend its adoption. The early engines were accordingly made so that the steam might be cut off before the piston had made its full stroke, and expand within the cylinder, the heat outside it being maintained by the expedient of the steam-case. But it was shortly found that this method of working was beyond the capacity of the average engineman of that day, and it was consequently given up for a time.
“We used to send out,” said Watt to Robert Hart, “a cylinder of double the size wanted, and cut off the steam at half stroke. This was a great saving of steam so long as the valves remained as at first; but when our men left her to the charge of the person who was to keep her, he began to make or try to make improvements, often by giving more steam. The engine did more work while the steam lasted, but the boiler could not keep up the demand. Then complaints came of want of steam, and we had to send a man down to see what was wrong. This was so expensive that we resolved to give up the expansion of the steam until we could get men that could work it, as a few tons of coal per year was less expensive than having the work stopped. In some of the mines a few hours’ stoppage was a serious matter, as it would cost the proprietor as much as 70l. per hour.”[156]
The principle was not, however, abandoned. It was of great value and importance in an economical point of view, and was again taken up by Watt and embodied in a more complete form in a subsequent invention. Since his time, indeed, expansive working has been carried to a much farther extent than he probably ever dreamt of, and has more than realised the beneficial results which his sagacious insight so early anticipated.
CHAPTER XIII.
Watt in Cornwall—Introduction of his Pumping-engines.
The Cornish miners continued baffled by their attempts to get rid of the water which hindered the working of their mines. The Newcomen engines had been taxed to the utmost, but were unable to send them deeper into the ground, and they were accordingly ready to welcome any invention that promised to relieve them of their difficulty. Among the various new contrivances for pumping water, that of Watt seemed to offer the greatest advantages; and if what was alleged of it proved true—that it was of greater power than the Newcomen engine, while its consumption of fuel was much less,—then it could not fail to prove of the greatest advantage to Cornish industry.