By an agreement between the Master Cotton Spinners and the Card and Blowing Room Amalgamation, which was signed in February 1917, women and girls are allowed to break off laps from openers and scutchers provided they do not exceed 45 lbs. in weight, and also to fetch these from the blowing-room on lap-trams and put them on the cards. In Leigh, Wigan, and other districts where Trade Unionism is weak, girls have been employed at this work for a long time prior to the agreement, and the laps are seldom moved on lap-trams but are carried on the girl's shoulder. Some overlookers said that they had always tried to get tall strong girls for lap-carrying, as the laps, though seldom very heavy--average weight 32-42 lbs.--are very cumbersome to manipulate, and that such girls never experienced any difficulty in carrying the laps. Where this care is not exercised (and it is to be feared that in the majority of cases no regard is paid to the girl's capacity for the work) difficulty in manipulating the bulky lap may be experienced by small girls. Can-tenting on the cards is an easy or fatiguing occupation according as the cans are made of fibre or of tin. When the latter are in use girls get very tired, as they are continually dragging the cans, three or four at a time, from the cards to the drawing-frames, which are often some distance away. The secretary of one branch of the Card Room Amalgamation expressed the opinion that the use of fibre-cans ought to be compulsory, as the improvement in physical condition when these are introduced is quite remarkable. But in view of the fact that whenever cans are being renewed fibre ones invariably replace the old-fashioned tin cans, legislation seems unnecessary, and in many places where tin cans are still in use trams are used to convey them to the drawing-frames. At the present time girls are frequently seen dragging skips of cops and bobbins from one room to another or on to the hoist. In well-managed mills the skips are moved on lines, or else are furnished with wheels, but sometimes cases are reported of girls getting ruptured through pulling skips without wheels up sloping floors.