474 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



and particularly of cotton, that the most extensive changes have been 

 made in the methods and practices of the industry and trade, and these 

 are enough to warrant an accounting of the work on cotton alone. 



Cotton, indeed, in the imiversality of its production and use and in 

 the numbers of human beings to which it gives employment, holds a 

 place unique among the fibers. Grown in some 60 or more countries, it 

 is utilized throughout the world more generally, in far greater quan- 

 tity, and in a far wider variety of products than any other. In the 

 United States alone, to produce the crop, gin it, assemble and merchan- 

 dise it, and to warehouse and transport it as raw material gives a live- 

 lihood, it is estimated, to more than 5 million people. To spin, weave 

 and knit, finish and fashion into apparel that part of the crop that 

 Americans alone consume supports probably 5 millions more. Qual- 

 ity enters importantly in almost every operation and business trans- 

 action throughout this entire chain, from the propagation of the 

 planting seed to the selection of the bales fed into the manufacturei-s' 

 machines, and indeed to the adjustment of those machines, for varia- 

 tion in the quality of cotton affects both its cash value and its suita- 

 bility for any given use. Yet cotton is after all a strangely inscrutable 

 commodity and gives up its secrets reluctantly. 



The difficulty of understanding cotton quality grows out of its 

 own complexity. A single pound — no more than can be stuffed into 

 a two-quart fruit jar — comprises 100 million or so fibers, each a single 

 elongated cell from the outer coat of a cotton seed, and each as 

 individual in its own peculiar characteristics as a human being. A 

 normal fiber forms first as a thin-walled hollow tube, sometimes 

 tapered from base to tip, within which a cylindrical layer of cellulose 

 is deposited daily, roughly like the rings formed annually in the trunk 

 of a tree. In the course of time the partially filled tube matures and 

 the depositing of cellulose ceases. At this stage the cylinder col- 

 lapses about its hollow interior or hmien into a ribbonlike thing, 

 much like a collapsed iimer tube of an automobile tire, and twists it- 

 self in spirals around its own axis. But even though they grow upon 

 the same plant or spring from the same seed, not all fibers are normal. 

 Some never mature; nor, if normal, do they all develop alike. Some 

 are strong as steel; others are weak and brittle; some are harsh, 

 others are soft; some are coarse, some are fine; some are definitely 

 tapered, in others the walls are more nearly uniform and parallel 

 throughout most of their length; some are brilliantly white, others 

 are pearly white, or discolored or stained. 



Every one of these characteristics affects in some obscure way the 

 beha\aor of the cotton in spinning or the quality of the spun and 

 woven textile, and so is a factor in the quality of the raw cotton it- 

 self. Tlius, if cotton fibers in a bale were uniform like nails in a 



