Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/647

 Europe of To-day 609 38,000,000 spindles and 463,000 power looms; in the twenty- two years from 1793 to 18 15 English exports, according to official valuation, rose from ^"17,000,000 annually to £58,000,000, in spite of the depression caused by the Napoleonic wars. These figures give an inkling of the industrial trans- formation which followed the great inventions. Now let us turn to the real increase in the productive capacity of the individual. In other words, let us see whether productive capacity has grown more rapidly than the population. Unfortunately, careful compilations of statistics are only of recent date, but we know that Hargreaves' jenny worked only eight spindles. The number was gradually increased to one hundred and twenty, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century to two hundred. The jenny now has more than a thousand spindles, each revolving at the rate of ten thousand revolutions per minute. A man and two boys can tend two thousand spindles. The hand-loom weaver used to make from sixty to eighty throws of the shuttle per minute. Fifty years ago the best power loom made only one hundred throws ; to-day the highest-grade loom runs at the rate of about four hundred per minute, and along with the increase of the productive capacity of the machine there is a decrease in the amount of human labor required in the operations. Formerly one weaver tended but one loom; now one worker tends from two to ten looms according to the grade of goods. So great has been the increase in the efficiency of textile machinery that a single operative can supply two hundred and fifty persons with the necessary cotton garments, or three hundred persons with woolen clothing. In every branch of industry attention has been devoted to increasing productive power, until almost marvelous results have been attained. In the continuation of the con- struction of the Cologne cathedral in 1870, two men with a steam crane lifted as much stone in a day as three hundred and sixty men could have done in the same time in the Middle Ages The old craftsman produced at best