We have not reached the end of our career of improvement. Civilization is not destined to run a backward race. William Lee's stocking-frame worked well for two centuries and a half. One of the most beautiful contrivances of our time has now greatly superseded it. The circular hosiery machine--more properly called a machine for manufacturing "looped fabrics"--works at such a rate that one girl attending upon the revolutions of this wonderful instrument can produce in one day the material for two hundred and forty pairs of stockings. She turns a little handle, with the ease with which she would turn a barrel-organ; and, as the machine revolves, hundreds of needles catch the thread and loop it into the chain which forms the stocking-cloth, or it makes the fashioned stocking. The new hosiery-machines have doubled the employment of the stocking-makers, by enabling us to meet the competition of foreign countries. The English were working upon the old slow stocking-frame, while the French and Belgians were using the rapid circular machine. The markets of the world would have been soon closed to us if we had clung to the old machine, through the force of any popular prejudice against a new machine. There is no portion of the export trade of this country which has increased with such extraordinary rapidity within the last six years as that of hosiery. The following abstract of the declared value of stockings exported since 1848 will sufficiently indicate the effects of improved machinery in cheapening production:-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stockings exported. | 1848. 1850. 1852. 1853. -------------------------------|---------------------------------------- | £ £ £ £ Cotton | 77,095 104,434 243,994 461,494 Silk | 24,324 20,256 25,140 23,579 Worsted | 40,413 74,482 117,349 261,140 Silk mixed with other material | 39 3,327 4,705 10,464 |---------------------------------------- | 141,871 202,499 391,188 756,677 ------------------------------------------------------------------------