A textile card crush roll operating system is driven by a two-speed electric motor completely independent of the main card cylinder driving motor and is provided with starting control means for operating the crush roll motor at slow speed for a pre-determined time according to automatically operable timing means during which interval sliver from the crush rolls is manually fed into an associated coiler and arranged in such a way that tension of the sliver is applied to stop control means which stops operation of the two-speed crush roll motor after the motor is accelerated to its high speed condition under the control of operating control means. Thus if sliver tension is substantially reduced, the crush roll system is automatically shut down.