AND ON THE CONTINENT.

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minent in Lancashire is a further improvement of Wellman’sinvention—the so-called “revolving flat card.”

In spinning proper the saving in labour compared with theinstance given by Uro results from the replacement of the hand-mule by the self-actor, as well as from the lengthening of thespinning-frames and increase in the number of spindles. In thetime of Ure the latter varied from 400 to GOO, whilst only occa-sionally mules up to 1,000 spindles were met with. For each ofthese machines there was a. spinner with two or three helpers; or,if the spinner looked after two mules, with four to six helpers (27).At the present time the spinner in Lancashire always minds twomachines (a pair of mules), and he has not more than two helpersfor the work. Here and there we find also, instead of one spinnerwith two helpers, two adult spinners (so-called joining system).Therewith the number of spindles per mule has so much increasedthat the lowest number of spindles to-day is about that which Ureadmired as the highest accomplishment of skill. From my ownobservation in 1891 at Oldham and Bolton, the average numberof spindles per mule is about 1,000; so that 2,000 spindles aretended by one spinner and two helpers. The largest machineswhich I have discovered have 2,700 to 2,800 spindles per pair ofmules. When finer yarns are spun with these highest numbers ofspindles the spinner has frequently three helpers; thus, in Bolton,on fine counts, with 2,208 spindles and upwards. In the spinningof fine counts at Bolton the number of spindles given above as themaximum is not attained; 2,520 spindles per pair of mules, asfar as I know, is the highest number reached. With 1,200spindles and under, which now only seldom occurs, one spinnerand one helper are employed.

England shows also in this direction an extraordinary increaseof labour capacity when compared with Germany . It is the moreremarkable because technical differences scarcely come into ac-count. The self-actors in both countries are certainly on exactlythe same principles; indeed those in Germany have, in manycases, been made in England. Whilst in England about 2,000spindles per pair of self-actors is to be looked upon as the usualnumber, about 1,300 to 1,600, with a great variation in somecases, are to be taken in Germany as the mean; 1,300 to 1,800are given as the average in Mulhouse. In Germany this number

27. Compare Ure: “ Philosophy of Manufactures,” p. 312; also “CottonManufacture,” II., 449.

II