COTTON FIBER SCIENCE — PALMER 481 



of Mrs. Fan*. Similar valuable help came from the late Dr. William 

 Crocker, then Director of the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant 

 Research at Yonkers, N. Y. ; and for the early studies of cellulose struc- 

 ture Prof. George L. Clark made available the X-ray equii^ment of 

 the Chemistry Department of the University of Illinois. 



Among the first of the other fields in wliich fiber analysis was 

 recognized as having application was ginning. Much mjury to the 

 quality of America's cotton crop was known to result from faulty 

 gimiing in some of the more than 14,500 cotton gins operating in the 

 country at that time; and in certain quarters a movement had been 

 proposed to put gmning under Federal regulation. The Department 

 of Agriculture did not, however, accept this proposal, believing that 

 teclmical knowledge was inadequate for a satisfactory inspection serv- 

 ice and that, in any case, the remedy lay in another direction. 



The gimiing question was resolved by the building in 1930 at Stone- 

 ville, jVIiss., of the National Cotton Ginning Laboratory, the world's 

 first of its kind, made possible by a generous gift of land from the 

 State of Mississippi. Here, in a magnificently designed plant, com- 

 plete with its own fiber laboratory, was developed one of the finest 

 examples of teamwork in research ever to be witnessed m this coun- 

 ti-y. In double harness an engineering staff, under the dynamic lead- 

 ership of the late Samuel II. McCrory and Charles A. Bennett, pooled 

 its forces with those of Webb's fiber analysts mider Leo Gerdes in a 

 broad program of gimiing lesearch and education. Before long, 

 Stoneville became a ]\Iecca for ginners from all parts of the cotton 

 belt, while few conventions of giimers took place without Bennett or 

 Gerdes, or both, speaking from the rostrum. Fiber analysis had 

 opened the way for a whole new understanding of the ginning process. 



Another group soon to seek out Yv^ebb's laboratory was that of the 

 textile manufacturers. It happened in 1931 that the crop of that year 

 turned out to be a great disappointment to spinners. Manufacturers 

 repeatedly found themselves frustrated in trying to meet buyers' 

 specifications, and confronted with the return of goods rejected on 

 delivery for deficient quality. A progressive but distraught manu- 

 facturer, Eugene Gwaltney, bomid for New York to attend a meeting 

 of the Textile Committee, D-13, of the American Society for Testing 

 Materials, stopped in Washington and in search of help sought out 

 AYebb for a day-long interview. So impressed was he that he ar- 

 ranged an eleventh-hour invitation from the Society and prevailed 

 upon Webb to accompany him to the meeting. The meeting time had 

 long been scheduled full, but Webb was asked to give an impromptu 

 talk at the banquet, following the feature speaker. Although tliis 

 was the last event of the meeting, and the audience had listened to 

 a long series of programed papers, the group was electrified and 



