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],