per annum.
It was still, however, a handicraft manufacture, and done for the most part at home.

Flax was spun and yarn was woven by hand.

Eventually machinery was employed, and the turn-out became proportionately large and valuable.

It would not be possible for hand labour to supply the amount of linen now turned out by the aid of machinery.

It would require three times the entire population of Ireland to spin and weave, by the old spinning-wheel and hand-loom methods, the amount of linen cloth now annually manufactured by the operatives of Belfast alone.
There are now forty large spinning-mills in Belfast and the neighbourhood, which furnish employment to a very large number of working people.[20] In the course of my visit to Belfast, I inspected the works of the York Street flax-spinning mills, founded in 1830 by the Messrs.