A factory containing two hundred looms was operated by one hundred persons who wove seven hundred pieces a week, and it was estimated that under the domestic system at least eight hundred and seventy-five looms would have been required to weave this amount of cloth, because the women of the household had their home duties to perform while the men were required to devote a considerable portion of their time to farming. It was therefore further estimated that the work done in a steam factory containing two hundred looms would, if performed by hand, give employment and support to a population of more than two thousand persons. It is interesting here to note, that, whereas a hand-loom weaver could produce two pieces of shirtings a week, an ordinary weaver is now able to turn off eight or ten pieces of equal length every ten hours; so that a modern weave room containing two hundred power looms operated by twenty-five weavers represents the labor of a community of sixty thousand craftsmen, their wives and their children. A population of thirty million would be required to perform by hand the work now produced by the Fall River factories alone. “Watt,” said a celebrated French engineer, “improves the steam engine, and this single improvement causes the industry of England to make an immense stride. This machine, at the present time [about 1830], represents the power of three hundred thousand horses or of two million men, strong and well fitted for labor, who should work night and day without an interruption and without repose.... A hairdresser invents, or at least brings into action, a machine for spinning cotton; this alone gives the British industry immense superiority. Fifty years only, after this great discovery, more than one million of the inhabitants of England are employed in those operations which depend, directly or indirectly, on the action of this machine. Lastly, England exports cotton, spun and woven by an admirable system of machinery, to the value of four hundred million francs yearly.... The British navigator travels in quest of the cotton of India, brings it from a distance of four thousand leagues, commits it to an operation of the machines of Arkwright, carries back their products to the East, making them again to travel four thousand leagues, and in spite of the loss of time—in spite of the enormous expense incurred by this voyage of eight thousand leagues, the cotton manufactured by the machinery of England becomes less costly than the cotton of India, spun and woven by hand near the field that produced it, and sold at the nearest market. So great is the power of the progress of machinery.”