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from the employer and operative, has not the possibility of acoalition at hand, because every suitable application of his moneyproduces competition—i.e., creates new capital seeking channelsfor investment. This strengthened supply can certainly also bebalanced from time to time by strengthened demand. But, ingeneral, a retarding moment makes itself felt on the side of thedemand—the enormously increased producing power of capital bytechnical progress. With a sovereign invested in machinery I canto-day produce four to five times as much yarn of the same qualityas I could 50 years ago. The joint influence of this speeding withthis relarding movement pioduced for the English industry an im-portant lowering of the rate of interest during the course of thecentury.
In a similar way England has herein to-day an advantage com-pared with the European Continent . Ordinary loan capital standsat the disposal of the English cotton industry for to 4 percent.; alongside exists, however, the possibility of receiving atany time capital subject to notice at 2^ to 3 per cent.—a systemwhich is used in many cases by spinning-mills in Oldham. On theother hand, the German employer works with an average rate ofinterest of 5 per cent.
An industrial establishment does not represent a permanentcapacity, but rather- one which is consumed. Most certainly, asabove shown, the tendency of development is from a change offixed capital to a floating one. Therewith, along with the in-terest, the creation of a depreciation rate becomes a necessity.According to the rules laid down by Platt, machinery for manipu-lating cotton should be depreciated by 7T per cent., buildings andsteam engines by 2-J- per cent. This amounts to about as muchas a total depreciation of 5 per cent. Therefore one can take 20years as the life of a cotton factory. The introduction of adefinite depreciation grants to English spinners and manufacturersgreat advantages over the Continental ones (13). According toAndrew and Ellison, the English spindle stands on the average inthe books at 18s. 6d. per spindle, and the loom at £20.
13. Thus according to Andrew: “ Fifty Years’Cotton Trade,” p. 8. Com-pare “ Respecting the Depreciation of the Spindles in the Rhine Provinces,”Jannasch, p. 41: “ The far greater progressed depreciation mostly helped theAlsatians to withstand the revolution in the industry, which was connectedwith their being taken over by the German State.”