AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 



machine the cleaning-process, by means of beaters and 

 currents of air, is continued and repeated, if necessary, 

 until every trace of foreign matter is removed, and the 

 cotton-fibers are thoroughly loosened. 



From the scutcher the cotton goes to the carding- 

 machine, perhaps the most important of all those 

 through which it has passed since leaving the gin. In 

 the carder the last remaining particles of impurities 

 are removed, defective fibers are plucked out, and the 

 tangled fibers from the lap are combed into parallel 

 order. 



In the raw cotton, as it comes fron the scutcher, 

 there are many imperfectly developed fibers which are 

 found about the seeds in the boll, and which are mixed 

 with the perfect fibers in the ginning. There are also 

 imperfect fibers from other causes in the cotton, which, 

 if allowed to pass the card and be spun or woven, 

 would make defective threads and consequently poor 

 material. These are all removed in the carding- 

 machine, along with bits of leaves and seeds that may 

 have escaped the other machines. But although this 

 removal is a necessary function of the carding-machine, 

 its use, primarily, is to comb the fibers into paral- 

 lel rows the beginning] of the actual process of 

 spinning. 



Carding by hand, as performed before the invention 

 of the rotary carding-machine, was done by means of 

 ordinary hand-cards pieces of boards covered with 

 leather, from which bristled thousands of short wires, 

 like needles protruding from a cushion. These needles 

 grasp and separate and make parallel the fibers, just 



