Note 259 — Chapter XVI · More Difficulties and more Inventions—Boulton again in Cornwall.

No wonder the miners were so urgent for reductions in working expenses, as we find from a communication from Watt to Boulton, of facts to be laid before Parliament against the proposed tax on coal, that Chacewater had sunk 50,000l. in setting the mine to work; Wheal Virgin 28,000l. in ten months, and still unprosperous; Poldice a very large sum, and merely paying expenses; Wheal Chance 35,000l., and only moderately prosperous; Pool 14,000l., without much prospect of recovery; Roskere languishing, and not paying expenses; United Mines, which had been at death’s door, still in a tottering state; Wheal Union stopped, after losing about 8000l.; Dalcoath 500l. spent on timber per month, and a new kibble-rope, of above a ton weight, worn out in a fortnight. [To draw a kibble of ore then, weighing about 3 cwt., took fully fifteen minutes, owing to the great depth of that mine, and two-thirds of the stuff drawn was stones.] To which Watt added, “if we had not furnished the miners with more effectual means of draining the water, almost all the deep mines would have been abandoned before now.”