Since this migration the best grade of silk has been made in Paterson, and there has been no competition to speak of that the Paterson manufacturers needed to fear. Yet they have been making only moderate profits while the Pennsylvania manufacturers of cheap silk have been making fortunes. Under the system of multiple looms, the business of Pennsylvania, has expanded 97 per cent in the last six years; under the one and two loom systems of Paterson its business has expanded only 22 per cent in the same time. Therefore the Paterson manufacturers propose to compete in the manufacture of cheaper silks and consequently decided to introduce the multiple loom system. To them this is only a natural economic development, and the opposition of the workers they feel is irrational, as opposed to progress. This view is made apparent in a statement issued by the silk manufacturers’ association: “As regards the three and four loom system, it is applicable only in the case of the very simplest grade of broad silks and as a matter of fact has for a long time been worked successfully and on a very large scale in other localities. Paterson cannot be excluded from this same privilege. No fight against improved machinery has ever been successful.” The beginning of the change came in one of the big Paterson mills about a year ago and the strike of last spring[1] was at first against the four loom system. The strike became general, however, and this demand was completely lost sight of before the strike came to an end. Since then nine or ten other mills have installed the four loom system and a score have begun to require the weavers to tend three looms instead of two. Footnote 1: See THE SURVEY of March 16, 1912. The strikers claim that the new system will cause unemployment, as did the installation of the two loom system together with other improvements in the mechanical equipment of the loom some years ago, and that the logical consequence will be the employment of unskilled women and children in place of the skilled weaver, and a forcing down of the level of wages until the Paterson average of $11.69, as given in the federal report for the year 1908, becomes as low as the Pennsylvania average of $6.56. As the percentage of women employed in Paterson mills has increased in the last few years and as the average of wages given out by the manufacturers this year is under $10, there is basis for these fears. Nor do the manufacturers deny these possibilities; they claim that the loss of skill is an inevitable accompaniment of improved processes, and the replacing of men by women and children is only in line with the development in all the textile trades. Some of the claims of the strikers are thus summarized by the _Paterson Evening News_: