478 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 60 



iiing tests tell only what a particular cotton can do — not what it is or 

 why it does it. 



Such was the state of things in 1927 when the Department, more 

 than ever beset with its problems of standardizing quality descriptions 

 and aware that in England and continental Europe scientific studies 

 of fibers were already under way, determined to make a fresh attempt 

 to get to the fundamentals of cotton quality. In its search for a leader 

 of the new attack, it fixed its sights on a promising young scientist, 

 Dr. Robert W. Webb, who had been steeped in plant science by an 

 inspirational teacher, Dr. Henry W. Barre, at Clemson Agricultural 

 College, had gone on to his doctorate in plant physiology and pathol- 

 ogy at Washington University in St. Louis, under a world-renowned 

 biologist, the late Dr. Benjamin Duggar, and then had prepared him- 

 self further by postdoctoral study at the University of Wisconsin. 

 Although it necessitated a radical change in the plans for his profes- 

 sional career, Dr. Webb, after mature deliberation and on the advice 

 of his academic sponsors, agreed to shoulder responsibility for the 

 contemplated project. This may be said to mark the starting point 

 in the United States of the advance that was to accelerate and broaden 

 into the wide movement that it is today. For the next dozen or more 

 years. Dr. Webb was at its head ; the record of progress in that period 

 was largely written by him and his associates in the Department of 

 Agriculture. 



Two years went into Webb's quiet preparation — reviewing and di- 

 gesting the scientific literature of this country and Europe, meeting 

 and talking with cotton manufacturers and merchants, and with genet- 

 icists and breeders about their basic quality problems. Soon it be- 

 came apparent that the task Webb had undertaken was too far 

 reaching, too difficult to be solved by any one man alone, or even by 

 a few; and that, if ever the secrets of cotton quality were to be dis- 

 covered, a group of finely coordinated workers of specialized but 

 varied talents — an orchestra of research workers — would be needed 

 to do it. Accordingly he set about programing the work in a series 

 of manageable projects, and proceeded to recruit a staff of enthusiastic 

 young physicists, chemists, cytologists, colorists, microscopists, and 

 mathematical analysts, including a radiologist. With their counsel 

 he planned his laboratory and selected the most advanced apparatus 

 obtainable with which to equip it. 



But not in the arsenal of science were all the weapons needed for 

 the attack. Clearly, one of the first requirements was an instrument 

 by which the individual fibers in the cotton mass could be separated 

 out and arranged in orderly length arrays for analysis and measure- 

 ment. Numerous attempts to devise such an instrument had been 

 made earlier, but none had been free of certain objectionable limita- 



