The enormous increase of wealth-producing power given by the new machinery can scarcely be realized.

It is reckoned that fifty men with modern machinery could do all the cotton-spinning of the whole of Lancashire a century ago.

Mr.Leone Levi has calculated that to make by hand all the yarn spun in England in one year by the use of the self-acting mule, would take 100,000,000 men.

The instruments which work this wonderful change are called "labour-saving" machinery.

From this title it may be deemed that their first object, or at any rate their chief effect, would be to lighten labour.