444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a long time the effect of prevailing high prices for pig-iron, coupled 

 with the influence of high protective duties imposed on the imports of 

 foreign iron, was to maintain a large number of inferior furnaces in 

 operation ; but after 1882 '83 the most intelligent American iron-pro- 

 ducers were compelled, as it were, to meet the stagnation and absence 

 of profit in their business by effecting improvements in the quality of 

 their furnaces, and undoubtedly also in their management ; and with 

 such effect that the average weekly capacity of the " anthracite " fur- 

 naces of the United States has been increased since 1883 from 220 to 

 2G4 tons, and of "bituminous" from 346 tons to 507, or to the extent 

 of 46 per cent. 



In the department of textile manufactures, investigation shows 

 that, owing to the greater effectiveness of cotton-machinery, the manu- 

 facture of cotton-goods during recent years has also increased in a 

 greater ratio than the increase of population ; and that this increase 

 has been going on at the rate of doubling the production in about 

 twenty years. In the United States the doubling period of population 

 is now about thirty-three years ; in Europe, about seventy-five years ; 

 and, while in Oriental countries the doubling period is not definitely 

 known, it is unquestionably longer than that of the United States. It 

 would, therefore, seem certain that not only is the present product of 

 manufactured cottons in excess of the world's present exchanging 

 capacity, but also that, without a decrease in machinery product, the 

 world's population must speedily increase their annual per capita con- 

 sumption, if this state of things is not to continue. The report of the 

 factory inspectors of the textile industries of Great Britain, for 1885, 

 shows the following curious changes, consequent on improvements in 

 machinery, to have taken place in the cotton-manufacture of Great 

 Britain since 1874 : A decrease of twenty in the whole number of cotton 

 factories ; a small increase in (throwing) spindles of 2,604,679, or 0*7 of 

 1 per cent (a result doubtless owing to the great improvement in the 

 producing capacity of the spindle) ; an increase of 6*1 per cent in the 

 number of persons employed ; and an increase in the number of looms 

 of 97,000, or 21 per cent. Taking all the textile industries of Great 

 Britain into consideration, the number of hands employed in 1884, as 

 compared with 1874, has not decreased, although the increase, 2*8 per 

 cent, has been small in proportion to the increase in production. The 

 number of children employed in 1884 was 34,000 less than 1874, while 

 the number of male and female adults employed increased about 65,000 ; 

 a change that implies an improvement in the social condition of the 

 country, as well as an increased production. 



The displacement of muscular labor in some of the cotton-mills of 

 the United States, within the last ten years, by improved machinery 

 has been from 33 to 50 per cent ; and the average work of one opera- 

 tive working one year, in the best mills of the United States, will now, 

 according to Mr. Atkinson, supply the annual wants of 1,600 fully 



