From the year 1795 to the year 1800, the amount of cotton manufactured in this country was on the average about _thirty-seven million pounds_ weight annually: ten years before it was only _ten million pounds_; ten years before that, only _four million pounds_; and during the previous fifty years it had been less than _two and a half million pounds_. The amount manufactured, up to the end of this last-named period, was limited by the fact that spinning was a much slower process than weaving. It was performed by means of an apparatus known as “the one-thread wheel.” No other spinning-machine existed; and it was the opinion of experts, about the year 1770, that it would hardly be possible in the course of the next thirty years, by collecting and training to the spinning trade every hand that could be secured for such a purpose, to raise the annual total to so much as _five million pounds_. As a matter of fact, however, _five million pounds_ were spun in the year 1776. In six years’ time, the original product had been doubled. In ten years, it had been more than quadrupled; in twenty years, it had increased nearly elevenfold; and in five and twenty years, it had increased fifteenfold.[27] [Sidenote ◆1 For every pound of cotton spun by labour, Arkwright’s machinery spun fourteen pounds.] ◆¹ To what, then, was this extraordinary increase due? It was due to the invention and introduction of new spinning machinery—especially to the machines invented by Hargreaves and Arkwright, and the successive application of horse-power, water-power, and lastly of steam-power, to driving them. Previous to the year 1770, such a thing as a cotton-mill was unknown. During the ten following years, about forty were erected in Great Britain; in the six years following there were erected a hundred more; and from that time forward their number increased rapidly, till they first absorbed, and then more than absorbed, the whole population that had previously conducted the industry in their own homes. As we follow the history of the manufacture into the present century, a large part of the increasing gross produce is to be set down to the increase in the employed population; but during the twenty-five years with which we have just been dealing, the number of hands employed in spinning had not more than doubled,[28] whilst the amount of cotton manufactured had increased by fifteen hundred per cent. It is therefore evident that the increase during this period is due almost entirely, not to human exertion, but to machinery.[29] [Sidenote ◆1 The manufacture of iron offers a similar example.]