he mills in the spinning
districts."

Schulze-Gaevernitz shows that the tendency in modern cotton-spinning
and weaving, especially in England, has been both to increase the
number of spindles and looms which an operative is called upon to
tend, and to increase the speed of spinning. "A worker tends to-day
more than twice or nearly three times as much machinery as his father
did; the number of machines in use has increased more than five-fold
since that time, while the workers have not quite doubled their
numbers."[201] With regard to speed, "since the beginning of the
seventies the speed of the spinning machines alone has increased about
15 per cent."[202]

We are not, however, at liberty to infer from Schulze-Gaevernitz's
statement regarding the increased number of spindles and looms an
operative tends, that an intensification of labour correspondent with
this increase of machinery has taken place, nor can the increased
output per operative be imputed chiefly to improved skill or energy of
the operative. Much of the labour-saving character of recent
improvements, especially in the carding, spinning, and intermediate
processes, has reduced to an automatic state work which formerly taxed
the energy of the operative, who has thereby been enabled to tend more
machinery and to quicken the speed without a net increase of working
energy.

In the carding, slubbing, intermediate, roving, and spinning machinery
there is in every case an increase in the amount of machinery tended.
But carding machinery has been revolutionised within the last few
years; the drawing frame has been made to stop automatically when
there is a fault, thus relieving the tender of a certain amount of
supervision; in the slubbing, intermediate, and roving frames certain
detailed improvements have been effected, as is also the case in the
spinning mules and sizing machines.

To some extent the increased quantity of spindles, etc., and increased
speed may be regarded as set off by relief due to these improvements.
Moreover, though there has no doubt been some general speeding up, any
exact measurement is hardly possible, for the speed of machinery is
very often regulated by the amount of work each process is made to do;
for example, if a roving frame makes a coarse hank, the speed of the
spindles does not require to be so great as when the hank is finer; in
that case the mule draws out the sliver to a greater extent than when
the roving is finer, or,