said, therefore, to be the
laying of the fibres in parallel order to one another, by the action of
the drawing rollers.

2. The sliver of cotton, as it leaves the card, is by no means
sufficiently uniform in weight per yard for the production of a uniform
and strong finished thread. It will easily be conceived by the readers
of this story of the cotton plant that the strength of any thread is
only that of its weakest portions.

Take a rope intended to hold a heavy weight suspended at its lower end,
and assume it to be made of the best material and stoutest substance,
but to contain one very weak place in it; this rope would practically be
useless, because the strength of the rope would only be that of the
weakest part.

The drawing machine in cotton spinning aims at removing the weak places
in cotton thread, thus making the real strength of the thread vastly
greater than it would otherwise be.

The method by which these important objects are attained may be briefly
explained as follows:--

From four to eight, but most usually six, cans of sliver from the
previous machine are placed behind the frame, and the ends of the
slivers conducted over special mechanism within the range of action of
four pairs of drawing rollers. This passage of the cotton is shown very
clearly in Fig. 17.

The top rollers are made of cast iron, covered with soft and highly
finished leather made from sheepskins, the object of this being to cause
the rollers to have a firm grip of the cotton fibres, without at the
same time injuring them. The bottom rollers are of iron or steel, made
with longitudinal flutes or grooves, in order to bite the cotton fibres
firmly on the leathers of the top rollers. In order to assist the
rollers in maintaining a firm grip of the fibres the top rollers are
held down by somewhat heavy weights.

The action of the drawing rollers will be adequately discussed later in
this story, when dealing with the inventions of Lewis Paul and Sir
Richard Arkwright, and need not be enlarged upon at this stage.

It will be sufficient, therefore, to say that, assuming that six slivers
are put up together at the back of the frame, the "draft" or amount of
drawing-out between the first and second pairs of rollers the cotton
comes to, may be about 1.3, between the second and third pairs 1.8, and
between the third and fourth pairs 2.6. These three multiplied together
give a total draft of slightly over 6.

In other words, assumi