At the present time, we are told by the same authority, the machinemakers of Lancashire are making power-looms with the greatest rapidity, and they cannot be made sufficiently fast to meet the demands of the manufacturers. This quick increase, notwithstanding the considerable expense of outfit, which by employing hand-weavers the manufacturer avoids entirely, may safely be taken as a test of the advantages and national importance of the power-loom. The following estimate is given of its productiveness as compared with hand-loom labour. A very good hand-weaver, twenty-five or thirty years of age, will weave _two_ pieces of cloth per week, of a certain description, each twenty-four yards long. In 1833, a steam-loom weaver, from fifteen to twenty years of age, assisted by a girl about twelve years of age, attending to four looms, can weave _eighteen_ similar pieces in a week; some can weave twenty pieces. It appears from the fuller statement given by Mr. Baines, that the comparative productiveness of steam-looms has rapidly increased up to the last-mentioned period, and therefore it may be conjectured not yet to have reached its maximum; and it is also stated, that in those descriptions of plain goods for which they have hitherto been chiefly used, “cloth made by these looms, when seen by those manufacturers who employ hand-weavers, at once, excites admiration, and a consciousness that their own weavers cannot equal it.” The set-off against these advantages is the interest on capital employed, and the expense of supplying power. It is not asserted by the more intelligent, either among masters or workmen, that the power-loom has been more than a secondary and minor cause of the lamentable depression and misery now existing among the hand-weavers; a depression which it is to be feared will never be removed but by the gradual relinquishment of that laborious and ill-paid trade.