modern looms there are 2000 pieces, and will be more, so in all the branches of its human membership an incessant specialisation of ability, and an inconceivably minute adjustment to new problems is ever in process. The proof is not merely that in fifty years Lancashire has doubled her population and her machinery, besides adding vastly to the latter's efficiency and speed, but that, though she has more than a third of the spindles of the world, they are so well managed and produce such fine work as to consume, in spite of their superior speed, only a fifth of the world's cotton crop. We can do, in fact, a great deal more than others with a bale of cotton.
It might be thought, then, that we have here an Eldorado, a unique industry pouring wealth into our people's pockets. Nevertheless, such a supposition would be somewhat beside the mark.
This fact is worth establishing, and can be established by three different proofs. Firstly, the average return on the capital invested in the cotton industry is moderate, and presents a narrow margin between prosperity and adversity, the net profit not exceeding an average of 5 per cent. A slight change in conditions, and capital would evidently find it more remunerative to take flight elsewhere. A second proof is furnished by the recent census of production, which shows that the net annual output, that is the gross output less the cost of the materials brought into Lancashire, is £47,000,000. Since there are about 570,000 persons
