ypical modern industry, that of cotton-spinning and weaving, the
increasing size is both continuous and rapid. The average number of
spindles and looms to the single factory in 1850 and 1885 are as
follows:--

Spindles. Power-Looms.

1850 10,858 155
1885 15,227 213

Even these figures do not fully represent the facts, for they include
considerable numbers of mills of the older sort, where spinning and
weaving are carried on together. Taking the more highly specialised
spinning mills in the Oldham district, the average is stated at
65,000, while the largest mills have as many as 185,000 spindles. So
also the average number of power-looms in the North Lancashire
district is placed at 600, the largest number in a single business
amounting to 4500.[106]

"Again, the cost of a steamship is perhaps equivalent to the labour of
ten years or more of those who work her, while a capital of about
L900,000,000 invested in railways in England and Wales is equivalent
to the work for about twenty years of the 400,000 people employed on
them."[107]

This growth in the unit of capital is, as we perceive, largely due to
the establishment of large and expensive machinery and other plant as
a leading feature in modern production. The fact that modern methods
are largely instrumental in increasing the quantity of products might
lead us to suppose that the growth of the raw material or circulating
part of the capital of a business would correspond with the growth of
fixed forms of capital. This, however, is not the case. In the most
highly organised machine industry an increasing proportion of the
economy goes into the improved methods of manipulating material so as
to prevent waste, and by improved quality of work and elaboration of
manufacture to get a larger net amount of product out of a given
quantity of raw material.

In cotton-spinning, for example, since 1834 the waste of raw material
has been reduced from 1/7 to about 1/10; inferior material, once
useless, is now mixed with better stuff; and more important still,
modern machinery has, by adapting itself to the spinning of finer
yarn, effected great saving in the quantity consumed by each spindle.
In many other industries we shall find this same process going on,
whereby the proportion of capital which consists of raw material is
reduced, and the proportion which consists in machinery and other
fixed capital enhanced.

The grow