By the middle of March he had sufficiently matured his ideas of a reciprocating expansive engine to enable him to take out letters patent, and the invention was enrolled on the 4th of July in the same year. It included the double engine and double-acting engine (steam pressing the piston upwards as well as downwards), the employment of steam on the expansive principle, various methods of equalising the power of the engine, the toothed rack and sector for guiding the piston-rod, and a rotative engine or steam-wheel. While perfecting these beautiful adaptations, Watt was often plunged in the depths of distress through many causes,—by sickness, headaches, and low spirits; by the pecuniary difficulties of the firm; by the repeated attempts of the Cornish miners to lower their dues; and by threatened invasions of his patent from all quarters. Another of his worries was the unsteadiness of his workmen. His letters to Boulton were full of complaints on this score. Excepting Wm. Murdock, who was in constant demand, there was scarcely one of them on whom he could place reliance. “We have very little credit, indeed,” said he, “in our Soho workmen. James Taylor has taken to dram-drinking at a most violent rate,—is obstinate, self-willed, and dissatisfied.” And again, “Cartwright’s engine has been a continued scene of botching and blunders. J. Smith and the rest are ignorant, and all of them must be looked at daily, or worse follows. Had I had any one man of common prudence and experience, who would have attended from morning till night, these things might have been avoided, and my life would have been more comfortable. As things are, it is much otherwise.”[234] Three months later, matters had not mended. J. Smith is pronounced “a very slow hand,” and “J. Taylor is sometimes three days together at the alehouse, except when he judged I should be going my rounds.... Dick Cartwright also continues too much devoted to beer.... I have read all our men lectures upon industry and good hours, though I fear it will not be to much purpose; idleness is ingrained in their constitution.”[235] Boulton wrote to him to “send home the most rascally of the Sohoites;” but this was impracticable, as better men to replace them were not at that time to be had. Things were quite as bad at Soho itself; for early in 1782 we find Boulton writing thus: “The forging-shop wants a total reformation; Peploe and others constantly drunk; spoke mildly to them at first, then threatened, and am now looking out for good hands, which are very scarce.”[236]
William Murdock was by far the ablest and most efficient of the Soho men, and won golden opinions in all quarters; so much so, that he was in constant request. We find him described as “flying from mine to mine,” putting the engines to rights. If anything went wrong, Murdock was immediately sent for. He was active, quick-sighted, shrewd, indefatigable, and an excellent workman. His wages, down to 1780, were only 20s. a week, and, thinking himself worth more, he asked for an advance to two guineas. Boulton, instead of refusing, adroitly managed to obtain a present of ten guineas from the owners of the United Mines, to which he added other ten, in acknowledgment of the admirable manner in which he had erected their new engine; Mr. Beauchamp, the Chairman of the Company, having publicly declared that “he regarded William as the most obliging and industrious workman he had ever known.” Though Murdock’s wages were not then raised, and though Bonze, the Cornish engineer—a man of means as well as of skill and experience—invited him to join in an engineering partnership, William remained loyal to the Boulton and Watt firm, and in due time he had his reward.
Murdock’s popularity with the Cornishmen increased so much that Watt seems to have grown somewhat jealous of him, for when William was to be had, they preferred him to Watt himself.[237] At Wheal Virgin, the adventurers insisted upon having him all to themselves; but this was not practicable, as there were other engines in progress requiring constant attention,—Wheal Crenver, which Watt described as “in the enemy’s country, Pool hardly completed yet, and Dalcoath in its childhood.”
“I cannot now leave Wheal Virgin a single day,” wrote Watt, “without running the risk of some vile blunder, particularly as the boilers are now setting. Wm. Murdock was at Wheal Virgin one day this week, and that day was taken up with Mr. Wedgwood,[238] so that it was partly lost. Yesterday he was taken away by Crenver people and is not returned. I fear I cannot get much of his help, and I assure you I need it much, for there cannot be a greater plague than to have five engines making by ignorant men and no helpmate to look after them. I have been tolerably well these few days, but cannot get up my spirits, from having too much to think upon.”
Combined with the troubles arising out of the perversities, blunderings, and bad conduct of his workmen, Watt had also to struggle against torment of mind and body, aggravated by bad news from home. Boulton was in the crisis of his troubles with his partner Fothergill, from which he was desperately struggling to shake himself free.[239]
Watt was made additionally miserable by the state of the bankers’ account, which was still overdrawn to a very large amount. The bankers were urgent for repayment, but neither of the partners saw where the money was to come from. Watt again thought of giving up altogether, and selling his share of the business as the only means of relief which presented itself.
“I am almost moved,” he wrote, “if Lowe, Vere, and Williams will free me from any demands on my future industry, to give up my present property altogether, and trust to Providence for my support. I cannot live as I am with any degree of comfort. The want of the superfluities of life is a trifle compared with continual anxiety. I do not see how you can pay L. V. & W. 1000l. per quarter; I am sure it cannot be from the engine business, unless we can reduce the amount of our general expenses to 0 and live upon air ourselves.... Though you and I should entirely lose this business and all its profits, you will get quit of a burdensome debt; and as both of us lived before it had a being, so we may do afterwards. Therefore consider what can be done, and do it without reluctance, or with as little as you can; and depend upon it that I am sincerely your friend, and shall push you to nothing that I do not think to be for your advantage.”[240]
Two days later, while still in a heavily desponding humour, he wrote thus:—
“If matters were to come to the worst, many methods may be fallen upon whereby we may preserve some consequence in the world. A hundred hours of melancholy will not pay one farthing of debt. Summon up your fortitude and try to turn your attention to business, and to correct the abuses at Soho.... All the idlers should be told that in case they persevere in want of attention, then dismission must ensue.... The Soho part of the business has been somehow a perpetual drain to us, and if it cannot be put on a better footing, must be cut off altogether by giving out the work to be done by others.”[241]
To add to their troubles, a fire broke out in the house of Boulton and Watt’s London agent for the sale of their copying machines, and the building, with its contents, was burnt to the ground, thereby causing a loss to the firm of above a thousand pounds. The mining trade was also wretchedly bad in Cornwall, several of the more important mines being unproductive, while ore was selling at low prices. The adventurers were accordingly urging Watt to abate the agreed dues for the use of their engines, and in several cases threatened to close the mines unless he did so. The United Mines asked to be reduced 50l. a month. Watt having refused to make the abatement, the mine was ordered to be stopped, on which he consented to give up the dues altogether for a period of six months. “There seemed,” he wrote to Boulton, “to be no other course, if we would maintain our right, and at the same time do justice to the poor people, who must otherwise absolutely starve, and are already riotously disposed through the stopping of Wheal Virgin.”[242] “In short,” said he, “almost the whole county is against us, and look upon us as oppressors and tyrants, from whose power they believe the horned imps of Satan are to relieve them.” Watt was indeed thoroughly sick of Cornwall, and longed to get back to Birmingham. He confessed he did not see how, under the present state of things, he could be of any more use there. The weather was very tempestuous, and he felt the fatigue of travelling from mine to mine too much for him to endure. On the 4th of April he wrote,—“I returned from the coast to Cosgarne last night with an aching head, after a peregrination of two days in very stormy weather.” “Upon the whole,” he wrote to Boulton, “I look upon our present Cornish prospects as very bad, and would not have you build too much upon them nor upon the engine business, without some material change. I shall think it prudent to look out for some other way of livelihood, as I expect that this will be swallowed up in merely paying its burdens.”[243] Watt, accordingly, finding that he could do no more good in Cornwall, left it about the middle of April, and returned with an aching head and heavy heart to Birmingham.