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To this end these natural powers, principally those of steam and falling water, are subsidized and taken into human employment. Spinning-machines, power-looms, and all the mechanical devices, acting, among other operatives, in the factories and workshops, are but so many laborers. They are usually denominated labor-saving machines, but it would be more just to call them labor-doing machines.
Military and upholstery trimmings, he ascertained, could be turned out in large quantities on power-looms; but dress and cloak trimmings, which were more elaborate, were made in America only in comparatively small quantities and again because of their intricate patterns and gold threads Europe could produce them cheaper on hand-looms.
If you patiently explained to her the theory of carding-machines, spinning-jennies, and power-looms, would her reception of your explanation weaken her conviction that the cloth was the result of design?
Such conditions had created an American market for cheap silks such as was unknown in Europe where quality was a far greater factor in the sale of silk materials. In the United States these flimsy dress goods could be turned out with little expense on American power-looms by unskilled workmen, whereas in other countries experienced men were needed to make them.
On American power-looms, which were surprisingly light of construction and were handled with great ease, most of the other goods were made. It was remarkable that a machine costing comparatively little and so simple to operate should be so accurate in weave, and turn out so much work.
"It's true it was a sore time for the hand-loom weavers when power-looms came in: them new-fangled things make a man's life like a lottery; and yet I'll never misdoubt that power-looms and railways, and all such-like inventions, are the gifts of God.
In 1810 the average price was 103 shillings the quarter, the highest ever known except in 1800 and 1801; and as commerce was dislocated by the Continental System and hand-labour was being largely replaced by the new power-looms and improved spinning machinery, the outlook would have been hopeless, had not our great enemy allowed us to import continental corn.
Soon after Arkwright's invention of the spinning-frame, Edmund Cartwright invented the power-loom, the idea of which came to him while he was visiting Arkwright's cotton-mills at Cromford. Cartwright took out his first patent in 1785. Within fifty years from that time there were at least one hundred thousand power-looms at work in Great Britain.
They earn very good wages and look healthy; but, where the wool is dyed, what with the dye and what with the oil, the piecers are all ready toileted to sing to a banjo; and sometimes, with rubbing their faces with their dirty hands, they get sore eyes. The power-looms are becoming more common. After this follows
I am not of those who would fling stones at the change; it is something, surely, that backs are no longer prematurely bent; you may no more look through dim panes of glass at the aged poor weaving tremulously for their little bit of ground in the cemetery. Rather are their working years too few now, not because they will it so but because it is with youth that the power-looms must be fed.
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