After pointing out what course should be taken to discover and remedy the faults of the engine, he proceeded:—
“Above all, patience must be exercised and things coolly examined and put to rights, and care be taken not to blame innocent parts. Everything must, as much as possible, be tried separately. Remind those who begin to growl, that in new, complicated, and difficult things, human foresight falls short—that time and money must be given to perfect things and find out their defects, otherwise they cannot be remedied.”[278]
Not being able to persuade Watt to come to his help, Boulton sent to Cornwall for Murdock, always ready to lend a hand on an emergency, and in the course of a few weeks he was in town at work upon the engines. The result is best told in Wyatt’s letter to Boulton, who had by this time returned to Birmingham:—
“Mr. Murdock has just set the engine to work. All the rods are altered. I think he has done more good than all the doctors we have had before; and his manner of doing it has been very satisfactory—so different from what we have been used to. He has been through all the flues himself, and really takes uncommon pains. Pray write to him; thank him for his attention. He will not have left town before he gets your letter, and press him to stay as long as he can be essentially serviceable.”
There was, however, so great a demand for Murdock’s presence in Cornwall, that he could not be spared for another day, and he hurried back again to his multifarious duties at the mines.
The cost of erecting the mill proved to be considerably in excess of the original estimate, and Watt early feared that it would turn out a losing concern. He had no doubt about the engines or the machinery being able to do all that had been promised; but he feared that the absence of business capacity on the part of the managers would be fatal to its commercial success.[279] He was especially annoyed at finding the mill made a public show of, and that it was constantly crowded with curious and frivolous people, whose presence seriously interfered with the operations of the workmen. It reached his ears that the managers of the mill even intended to hold a masquerade in it, with the professed object of starting the concern with eclat! Watt denounced this as sheer humbug. “What have Dukes, Lords, and Ladies,” said he, “to do with masquerading in a flour-mill? You must take steps to curb the vanity of ——, else it will ruin him. As for ourselves, considering that we are much envied at any rate, everything which contributes to render us conspicuous ought to be avoided. Let us content ourselves with doing.”[280] It was also found that the mill was becoming a nest for schemers and speculators occupied in devising all manner of new projects. Boulton bestirred himself to put matters in a more business-like train. Steps were taken to close the mill against the crowd of idle visitors; and Boulton shortly after reported that “the manufacturing of Bubbles and new schemes is removed from the Mill to a private Lodging.”
When the mill was at length set to work, it performed to the entire satisfaction of its projectors. The engine, on one occasion, ground as much as 3000 bushels of wheat in twenty-four hours. The usual rate of work per week of six days was 16,000 bushels of wheat, cleaned, ground, and dressed into fine flour (some of it being ground two or three times over); or sufficient, according to Boulton’s estimate, for the weekly consumption of 150,000 people. The important uses of the double rotative engine were thus exhibited in the most striking manner; and the fame of the Albion Mill extended far and wide. It so far answered the main purpose which Boulton and Watt had in view in originally embarking in the enterprise; but it must be added that the success was accomplished at a very serious sacrifice. The mill never succeeded commercially. It was too costly in its construction and its management, and though it did an immense business it was at a loss. The concern was, doubtless, capable of great improvement, and, had time been allowed, it would probably have come round. When its prospects seemed to be brightening,[281] it was set on fire in several places by incendiaries on the night of the 3rd of March, 1791. The villains had made their arrangements with deliberation and skill. They fastened the main cock of the water-cistern, and chose the hour of low tide for firing the building, so that water could not be got to play upon the flames, and the mill was burnt to the ground in a few hours. A reward was offered for the apprehension of the criminals, but they were never discovered. The loss sustained by the Company was about 10,000l. Boulton and Watt were the principal sufferers; the former holding 6000l., and the latter 3000l. interest in the undertaking.[282]
Meanwhile orders for rotative engines were coming in apace at Soho,—engines for paper-mills and cotton-mills, for flour-mills and iron-mills, and for sugar-mills in America and the West Indies. At the same time pumping-engines were in hand for France, Spain, and Italy. The steam-engine was becoming an established power, and its advantages were every day more clearly recognised. It was alike docile, regular, economical, and effective, at all times and seasons, by night as by day, in summer and in winter. While the wind-mills were stopped by calms and the water-mills by frosts, the steam-mill worked on with untiring power. “There is not a single water-mill now at work in Staffordshire,” wrote Boulton to Wyatt in December; “they are all frozen up, and were it not for Wilkinson’s steam-mill, the poor nailers must have perished; but his mill goes on rolling and slitting ten tons of iron a day, which is carried away as fast as it can be bundled up; and thus the employment and subsistence of these poor people are secured.”
As the demand for rotative engines set in, Watt became more hopeful as to the prospects of this branch of manufacture. He even began to fear lest the firm should be unable to execute the orders, so fast did they follow each other. “I have no doubt,” he wrote to Boulton, “that we shall soon so methodize the rotative engines as to get on with them at a great pace. Indeed, that is already in some degree the case. But we must have more men, and these we can only have by the slow process of breeding them.”[283] A fortnight later he wrote, “Orders for rotative engines are coming in daily; but, if we part with any more men here, we must stop taking them in.” Want of skilled workmen continued to be one of Watt’s greatest difficulties. When the amount of work to be executed was comparatively small, and sufficient time was given to execute it, he was able to turn out very satisfactory workmanship;[284] but when the orders came pouring in, new hands were necessarily taken on, who proved a constant source of anxiety and trouble. Even the “old hands,” when sent to a distance to fit up engines, being left, in a great measure, to themselves, were apt to become careless and ill-conditioned. With some, self-conceit was the stumbling-block, with others temper, but with the greater number, drink. “I am very sorry to hear,” wrote Watt to Boulton, “that Malcolm Logan’s disease increases. I think you should talk to him roundly upon it, and endeavour to procure him to make a solemn resolution or oath against drinking for some given term.” Another foreman sent to erect an engine in Craven was afflicted with a distemper of a different sort. He was found to have put the engine very badly together, and, instead of attending to his work, had gone a-hunting in a pig-tail wig! “If the half of this be true,” wrote Watt, “as I fear it is, he will not do to be sent to New River Head [where an engine was about to be erected], and I have at present nobody else here.... I suppose I shall be obliged to send Joseph over, for we must not have a bad engine if it can be helped.... We seem to be getting into our old troubles again.”[285]
William Murdock continued, as before, an admirable exception. He was as indefatigable as ever, always ready with an expedient to remedy a defect, and willing to work at all hours. A great clamour had been raised in Cornwall during his stay in London while setting the Albion Mill to rights, as there was no other person there capable of supplying his place, and fulfilling his numerous and responsible duties. Boulton deplored that more men such as Murdock were not to be had;—“He is now flying from mine to mine,” he wrote, “and hath so many calls upon him that he is inclined to grow peevish; and if we take him from North Downs, Chacewater, and Towan (all of which engines he has the care of), they will run into disorder and ruin; they have not a man at North Downs that is better than a stoker.”