COTTON FIBER SCIENCE — PALMER 487 



of time, the Federal plant scientists found their needs so far beyond 

 the capacity of Webb's laboratory to meet their requirements that the 

 decision was taken to split his staff again, gi\ing the Plant Industry 

 group its own laboratory and personnel. 



The repeated splitting off of parts of Webb's original organiza- 

 tion did nothing, however, to retard the progress of the new science. 

 Ratlier its effect was that of proliferation. At the University of 

 Tennessee an energetic young physicist. Dr. K. L. Hertel, had now 

 come into the field with a ''fibrograph," a pliotoelectric instrument 

 designed to speed the evaluation of certam fiber-length statistics, 

 which was to be but the first of a nmnber of valuable inventions of 

 laboratory apparatus. At the Massachusetts Institute of Teclmology, 

 the late Dr. George B, Haven and Dr. Edward E. Schwarz who, 

 through early association with Dr. Webb in the American Society 

 for Testing Materials, had been encouraged to push onward with 

 optical studies of the structure of cotton fibers, were also making use- 

 ful contributions. Meanwhile, there had also been formed two im- 

 portant new industry groups to promote scientific studies — the Textile 

 Foundation and the Textile Research Institute — both of which had 

 turned the power of their resources upon the study of fibers. In- 

 terest in fiber science had indeed become contagious; the intriguing 

 potentialities and the promise of professional reward were attract- 

 ing an increasing number of alert and earnest young scientists m 

 a dozen or more research laboratories over the country. 



Then, in the early and mid-1940's, almost without warning came 

 a veritable explosion. First, a number of manufacturers, confronted 

 with the necessity of meeting firm specifications in their contracts 

 for military goods, and aware through their own industry organiza- 

 tions of the need of precise raw material analysis, began, one by one, 

 to set up fiber laboratories of their own. As they did so, they also 

 began to require of their cotton shippers that the raw cotton sup- 

 plied them pass certain laboratory tests of fiber strength, fineness, 

 and maturity. This was a serious development from the standpoint 

 of the cotton merchants and shippers, who in turn, for their own 

 protection, were compelled to find means of ascertaming in advance 

 of sliipment results from the laboratory analyses of the cottons they 

 offered and sold to the mills. Govermnent facilities were wholly 

 inadequate to handle the volimie of Avork tliat thus developed. To 

 meet the increasing demand, a number of commercial testing firms 

 stepped into the breach and establislied custom laboratories to pro- 

 vide the wanted service. Then, in the course of a little tune, the 

 stronger and more progressive of the cotton merchant firms equipped 

 themselves with laboratories of their own, and some prepared to sub- 

 ject all or most of the cotton they handled to laboratory analysis. 



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