It is an over-simplification to ascribe the cause of the debasement of the weavers’ conditions to the power-loom.3 The status of the weavers had been shattered by 1813, at a time when the total number of power-looms in the U.K. was estimated at 2,400, and when the competition of power with hand was largely psychological. The estimate of power-looms rises to 14,000 in 1820, but even then it was slow and clumsy
