snarled fibers are arranged so that they lie
out straight and smooth, and when this is done the material is ready
for the bobbin and fly frames."

"And what, for goodness' sake, might those be?" demanded Captain
Dillingham.

"I certainly am a great hero coming here and knowing so much," Hal
answered with amusement. "I think you will understand them better, sir,
if you forget what they're called and remember only what they do. They
actually combine three processes: slubbing, intermediate, and roving,
and their aim is to draw the sliver out until it is thinner, more
uniform, and cleaner for spinning. Surely that is simple enough. The
spinning is done on a mule or a ring frame--sometimes the one is
preferred, sometimes the other. Generally speaking, the thread from one
of these machines is what is used for weaving purposes. Sometimes,
though, it happens that an order comes for a crackajack fine yarn of
the best possible quality and then another combing or carding process
follows which takes out everything shorter than fibers of a specified
length. As a result about seventeen per cent. of waste is thrown out,
as great a percentage as in all the other processes put together.
Naturally it is a pretty expensive operation and it makes the yarn thus
turned out high in price."

"I suppose such yarn goes only into the finest quality goods," observed
Captain Dillingham.

"Exactly!" was Hal's answer.

"It all sounds simple as rolling off a log," Carl affirmed.

"If it seems so to you, just you think back over the problem Arkwright
and some of the other inventors, the fruit of whose labors we are now
reaping, had to solve," put in Uncle Frederick. "Even I, who am
ignorant as an Egyptian mummy concerning cotton manufacture, can
appreciate to some extent what they were up against. You must remember
that no material is stronger than its weakest part. You have, for
instance, a thin place in a string; it matters not how strong that
string may be in other spots; pull it taut and it will snap. The thick
places do not help make the string strong as a whole. So it is with
thread. You have to draw it out until every portion of it is as strong
as every other--a pretty little conundrum! It is the drawing, twisting,
and doubling which makes the thread first uniform and then strong. Try
working-out devices that shall do all these things--devices that shall
twist and then double without untwisting, for example. You'll find it
worse than a