47o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



this evolution, the combination of which includes the sum of the 

 advance. Not less wonderful than the succession of power-ma- 

 chines for the automatic handling of the fiber in the several stages 

 of its manipulation, is the series of mechanical contrivances for 

 the automatic delivery of the material from machine to machine 

 without the touching of human hand. The ingenuity of man has 

 been constantly directed, in these latter years, to devices for the 

 accomplishment of two purposes : first, to increase production ; 

 second, to diminish waste. Both tend to reduce the cost to the 

 consumer, the first by reducing the number of operatives required 

 to make a given amount of product and by increasing the pro- 

 ductive capacity of machines otherwise perfect. Perfect as these 

 machines now appear to be in their operation, every one among 

 them is susceptible of improvement, and the patent offices of every 

 manufacturing nation are burdened with the plans and specifica- 

 tions of new devices, conceived by the bright mechanics who 

 abound among the operatives, and suggested generally by their 

 daily work and observation, the purpose of which is to add either 

 simplicity or celerity, or to still further reduce the necessity for 

 handling.* Most of these inventions come to naught ; many of 

 them are constantly introduced into the mills. Some few of these 

 advances not previously spoken of may be enumerated here. Self- 

 feeders on the first breaker and finisher have been applied to card 

 machines, dispensing with half the help formerly necessary in the 

 card-room. Self-operating mules have been introduced in cloth- 

 mills, effecting a saving of from twenty to forty per cent in the cost 

 of spinning. Improved winders, driers, and cloth-presses give 

 greatly increased rapidity to the processes of finishing. In weav- 

 ing flannels, a width of three yards at once, seventy-five or eighty 

 picks a minute are woven as economically and as excellently as 

 forty or fifty picks were thirty years ago. In making cassimeres, 

 the broad loom has been generally substituted for the narrow 

 loom almost universally employed as recently as 1860. Fifty-six 

 yards of Brussels carpet can now be woven in a day by one girl, 

 in the improved looms, where fourteen yards a day was a good 

 product in 1860, with the same help. Similar illustrations might 

 be multiplied almost indefinitely. While there has been no new 

 departure or novel idea of transforming effect in the wool manu- 

 facture, the general advance in mechanical efficiency, during the 

 last quarter-century, has been so great as to equal an economical 

 gain in manufacture equivalent to that which took place when 

 power was first substituted for hand-labor. In our great yarn- 



* The records of the United States Patent Office, from its founding up to July, 1890, 

 show a total of 8,890 patents issued for textile machinery, divided as follows : Felting and 

 hat-making, 1,231; carding, 1,194; knitting, 1,189; spinning, 1,921; weaving, 2,954; 

 cloth-finishing, 401. 



