MACHINERY IN TEXTILES, 143 



the same adjustment in woolens as has been made in 

 cottons, and for the same reasons, will show that 

 while it required 18,753 operatives in 1865 to pro- 

 duce 46,008,141 yards of cloth, in 1875, 11,550 oper- 

 atives would have produced 90,208,280 yards in the 

 same time. Showing at once, not only an absolute 

 reduction of 38 per cent, in the muscular labor em- 

 ployed, but an increase of 98 per cent, in the product. 

 These great developments in cotton and woolen tex- 

 tiles were for the ten years from 1865 to 1875. For the 

 eight years since 1875 the increase in production from 

 the continued improvements in machinery has contin- 

 ued, but probably not in so marked a degree. The 

 statistics upon this point by the Census of 1880 I 

 have not yet been able to reach. 



In these two great productions of cotton and woolen 

 cloths, though there had been an increased average 

 product of nearly 450 per cent, in one decade, there 

 was, in the same period, an absolute decrease in mus- 

 cular employment equal to the labor of 353 operatives. 



Full 40 years ago machine cards, spinners, and 

 looms had utterly destroyed all our domestic or 

 household manufactures, and compelled those who 

 were engaged in them, the sons and daughters of our 

 farms and rural districts, to find employment in the 

 mills of our manufacturing towns and cities, or to live 

 in idleness and consequent misery. Since that time 

 70 per cent, of the hand labor then required in tho 

 mills in the production of textile fabrics has been dis- 

 placed by improvements in their machinery, whilst, at 

 the same time, production has been greatly increased. 

 What has been done in the Philadelphia yarn mill, 



