482 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 60 



stayed on into the morning. Soon afterward, a party of the cotton 

 department heads of the four major tire manufacturers arrived in 

 Washington to petition the Department of Agriculture to afford them 

 a testing service employing Webb's new processes. Conventional 

 classing methods of quality determination, they said, were not getting 

 them the cottons they needed. 



Through the American Society for Testing Materials — industry's 

 own official organization for the approval and adoption of imiform 

 techniques for the new testing of industrial raw materials — industry's 

 interest was still further increased. On Webb's suggestion the Soci- 

 ety organized a Raw Cotton Section, and he was pressed to accept the 

 section chairmanship. Webb at first demurred, believing it best that 

 the Committee keep itself in position to evaluate his work with com- 

 plete objectivity. But, as time passed the pressure increased, and in 

 1934 Webb finally yielded. He held the office through 9 productive 

 years, finally retiring at his own request in a showier of encomiums for 

 the service he had given and of regrets for his leaving it. It w^as 

 during Webb's regime, it may be added, that the first standard test 

 methods for the measurement of various cotton fiber properties, in- 

 cluding specifications and tolerances, were put on the books of the 

 American Society for Testing Materials. Moreover, practically all 

 the basic fiber test methods that he sponsored many years ago remain 

 on the ASTM books today, though they appear now in somewhat 

 revised and improved form, as a result of further developments in 

 know^ledge, teclmiques, and skills since their original adoption. 



If ginners and manufacturers were interested, commercial seed- 

 breeders and experimental geneticists were enthusiastic. A number 

 of them, almost from the beginning, were frequent visitors to Webb's 

 laboratory, eagerly following the progress being made and stimulat- 

 ing the work with their encouragement. In 1933, when a policy of 

 retrenchment was ordered in keeping with a sweeping reduction in 

 total governmental expenditures, these people voluntarily^ came for- 

 ward to demand that the work be not reduced but expanded and 

 intensified. 



Confidence in the soundness of Webb's program was reinforced at 

 an early stage by two of his own notable achievements, which are noAv 

 regarded as classics in fiber science. First, in seeking to solve the 

 riddle of the relationship of fiber fineness to the strength of yams 

 during the early 1930's, Webb had his assistants in his spiiming labo- 

 ratory at Clemson College mechanically cut extra long and veiy fine 

 Sea Island cotton to lengths comparable with bread-and-butter up- 

 land cottons, and to commingle them in varying length proportions, 

 after which the mixtures were spun into yams. The approach was 

 original and unique; the results were sensational. Yams spim from 



