The embargo and non-importation Acts went into effect in the last days of 1807. Within less than two years the number of spindles was increased, or arrangements were made for increasing it, from eight thousand to eighty thousand.[12] Nearly four million dollars of capital were invested in mills, and four thousand persons were in their employ, or expected soon to be employed in them. The cotton cost about twenty cents a pound; the yarn sold on an average at about $1.12½ a pound. Besides these mills, which were worked mostly by water but partly by horsepower, the domestic manufacture of cotton and linen supplied a much larger part of the market. Two thirds of the clothing and house-linen used in the United States outside of the cities was made in farm-houses, and nearly every farmer in New England sold some portion of the stock woven every year by the women of his household. Much of this coarse but strong flaxen material, sold at about fifteen or twenty cents a yard by the spinner, was sent to the Southern States.[13] While the cotton and linen industries of the North became profitable, the manufactures of wool lagged little behind. William Whittemore, who owned the patent for a machine which manufactured wool and cotton cards, reported from Cambridge in Massachusetts, Nov. 24, 1809, that only the want of card-wire prevented him from using all his machines to the full extent of their power.[14] “Since the obstructions to our foreign trade, the manufactures of our country have increased astonishingly,” he wrote. “The demand for wool and cotton cards the present season has been twice as great as it has been any year preceding.” Scarcity of good wool checked the growth of this industry, and the demand soon roused a mania among farmers for improving the breed of sheep. Between one hundred and three hundred per cent of profit attended all these industries, and little or no capital was required.