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Show "rope superior to leather Fibrous Material Rapidly Supplanting Belting in American and European Euro-pean Mills and Factories. ( For 20 years there has been an Increasing In-creasing use in this country of mantla rope for power transmission In mills and factories In place of leather belting. belt-ing. In English factories ropes superseded super-seded belting long ago, and their use Is nearly universal. In the United . States the change that has taken place began with the acquisition' of the Philippine Phil-ippine islands, where, as everybody knows, ' the manlla hemp flourishes. The fiber of this hemp varies in length from 6 to 12 feet, and occasionally attains at-tains a length of 18 feet. It Is said to possess greater tensile strength than any other fiber known, exceeding exceed-ing 50,000 pounds per square Inch. Rope drives, as transmission ropes are called, possess the advantage of noise- . lessness, owing to their flexibility and to the existence of an air passage in the grooves between the rope and the sheath. , t |