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National Geographic : 1920 Mar
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE THE DELIVERY END OF A CARDING-MACHINE Here we see the "lap" spread out in gossamer-like thinness over the card cloth. The filmy sheet is then gathered into the "sliver"; the sliver is the white streamer clearly pictured on the extreme left. The second stage in the conversion of raw cotton into plain yarn now begins. turns a minute. Placed end to end, these dancing dervishes of the textile industry would reach from Montreal, Canada, to Memphis, Tenn. EIGHT MILES OF COTTON CLOTH MADE EVERY MINUTE Then there are the looms, a quarter of a million of them. Put these cloth-mak ing machines together, end to end, with no aisles between them, and the weaving shed required to house them would begin at Boston, Mass., and end at Wilmington, Del. Every third spindle and loom in the United States is humming away in the cities and towns of the Bay State. Of the textiles, cotton is first, some two billion yards of woven goods leaving the cotton looms every year. That means cloth flowing from machines at the rate of nearly eight miles a minute! It is suffi cient piece goods to make a woven belt long enough to hitch the moon to the earth and more than six feet wide! Of sheetings, shirtings, and muslins Massa chusetts produces about thirteen yards for every person in the United States; of fancy woven material, nearly four yards; of napped fabrics, more than one yard; of velvets, corduroys, etc., nearly a yard. THE STORY OF A YARD OF CALICO A piece of simple calico seems a mere trifle; but the story of its manufacture is an epic of genius. Followed from the raw cotton in the bale to the bolt of cloth 210
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