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It
looked as though the making of steam engines was not to be the profitable
business it had promised to be. The rotative engine was patented, in 1781,
and of the five or six methods of producing rotary motion mentioned in
the specification, the one which James Watt decided to adopt was one which
had been invented some time before, but only included in the patent at
the last moment. It was known as the Sun and Planet motion, because an
arrangement of two wheels, one rotating round the other, was utilized
to avoid using the crank, which, though well known for centuries, had been
patented by one Washborough, who was also endeavoring to build an engine.
Even though he had spent so much time over the rotary engine. Watt was
more interested in it for scientific reasons than from hope of profit.
When difficulties were growing in Cornwall and closing the mines.
James Watt wrote to Matthew Boulton:
"My inclination and feelings
would lead me to abandon both Cornwall and Wheal Virgin forthwith, and
to attend to and amuse myself with these rotative machines, etc., but it
would be dropping the substance to catch at the shadow : I have a very
mean opinion of the rotative profits, and the trouble with each of them
must be at least double that of an engine which raises water."
Matthew Boulton, however, was more hopeful.
In April, 1782, orders for engines had practically ceased, but Boulton
was confident of their success, if only the mills would take up the engine.
He was ready with an answer to Watt's complaints that mill engines were
all small ones, and suggests that mills offer a more permanent source of
business " than these transient mines," and the difficulty of small engines
could be curtailed " by mailing a pattern card of them and confining ourselves
to those sorts and sizes." This is the beginning of standardization in
engineering, and an important step forward in the firm's history.
Applications for mill engines soon
began to come, among them was a steam corn-mill required for the Commissioners
of the Victualling Office, to be erected at Portsmouth, and a scheme for
drying gunpowder by some steam machine.
As orders for rotatives at this date
were coming in very slowly, Matthew Boulton conceived the idea of a steam
corn-mill, in London, to advertise the new engine. This was in 1783, but
the London capitalists were averse from the undertaking, and the engine
firm had to find the greater part of the capital. However, sufficient shareholders
were got together, and a charter of incorporation applied for, but owing
to the strenuous opposition of the millers, it was refused. Boulton made
out their case in a letter to Matthews, which is interesting as showing
the attitude of a trade, which was perfectly satisfied with the power it
was already using (i.e. wind and water), to the new steam power. He says,
" it seems the millers are determined to be masters of us and ye publick...
At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, then, the use of steam power in industry was neither universal
nor extensive. The total number of engines in Great Britain and Ireland,
in the year 1800, was 321, representing a total horse-power of 5,210. Nevertheless,
the location and purpose of these 321 engines is of considerable importance.
It is a curious fact that they are nearly all employed in comparatively
new industries. The newest industry in the country, the cotton trade, used
eighty-four engines of 1,382 horse-power. The wool trade that, up to 1731,
had been protected by Parliament, used only nine engines of 180 horse power.
This was probably due to the fact that the organization of the woolen trade was only just developing out of the domestic into the factory system,
and that wool was very liable to snap when spun and woven mechanically.
On the other hand, the cotton trade was a new thing, and had no great weight
of domestic tradition behind it ; it had not been localized in sheep-rearing
districts for centuries, and its organization was much less stabilized.
Rapid development was easy and power was largely applied.
If we look at the other industries
that used steam power in 1800, it becomes clear that, apart from mines,
water-works, canals, and iron-works, the steam engine was hardly used in
industry.
The mines had to use the steam engine
in order to proceed at all, their only alternative being the con stant
sinking of new shafts in order to work at levels where drainage was not
an all-important problem.
The water works and, in many cases,
the canals could not exist without steam power, for their very existence
depended upon the regular raising of large quantities of water to high
levels. Steam was the only power that made this possible.
The iron works also had a special
reason for needing steam power, the smelting of iron with coal had made
an increased blast necessary. The iron-works were usually situated on the
coal and iron seams, where coal was easily obtainable and cheap power from
water was not often available. The power to drive the bellows for the increased
blast was obviously best obtained from coal-driven steam engines, and the
success of John Wilkinson along such lines was a valuable advertisement
and recommendation for the use of the steam engine in iron works.
As regards the distribution of the
engines geographically, it is obvious that the bad state of the roads made
it essential for cheap working that the engines should be situated on the
coal-fields, or where coal could be easily transported by water, i.e. by
canal or coast route. In fact, the only engines built off the coal-fields
were those in Cornwall, where coals came by sea, but were always difficult
to obtain, and those which surrounded the metropolis itself.
London, of course, had long possessed
an adequate coal supply, though It was carefully controlled and regulated
by a limited number of coal dealers, who owned the wharves and quays where
the Newcastle Fleet unloaded. Otherwise the steam engines were built on
the coal-fields. This was the end of many industries, which could easily
have used increased power, but were unable to obtain it, owing to their
situation away from the coal-fields.
This helps to account for the gradual
introduction of steam power. The steam engines were generally erected in
new enterprises near the coal-fields, while the old centers of localized
industry continued along traditional lines. Gradually competition added
to the numbers of the power-driven works and decreased those of the older
type, until the industries that needed power were almost all clustered
round or on the coal-fields. All this happened before the days of the railway
and rapid coal transport. The movement of industry is now rather away from
the coal-fields than towards them; a state of things that is the result
of many influences, some social and some purely economic.
It is strange that the position of
the steam engine in its early years has been so neglected by economic
historians, even Mantoux.who claims to have seen the records of tile firm
of Boulton & Watt, makes several mistakes in his dates of the earliest
application of steam to various trades. Moreover, another historian says
that as in 1800 there were only fifty-three steam engines in Birmingham,
Manchester, and Leeds, " the steam engine only gradually supplanted water
as a motive power." This, of course, proves nothing, as there is no comparison
made between water and steam power.
At any rate, it is obvious that an
adequate and accurate account of the position of steam power in 1800 is
very necessary to give precision to the economic history of that period.
The story of the early progress of
steam power in Industry is easily epitomized. At first it was used as a
matter of sheer necessity by the mines; then later it enabled new methods
to be employed in smelting iron and working textile machinery of a new
and powerful description: then lastly it replaced other types of power
in the rest of the industrial field, wherever coals became cheap.
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