COTTON FIBER SCIENCE — PALMER 489 



In Arizona, E. H. Pressley, an agronomist on the staff of the Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station, and fellow alumnus of Clemson, who in 

 association with the late T. H. Kearney had followed the progress of 

 Webb's work, discovered that by certain improvements in the Chan- 

 dler wrapped round-bundle strength method, the aggregated strength 

 of cotton fibers, paralleled in a flat unwrapped bundle, could be ob- 

 tained more easily and with a marked saving of time. 



But, going back to an earlier time, between 1930 and 1940 with 

 Webb's inspirational guidance Malcolm E. Campbell and a select 

 staff, working mider a cooperative arrangement in the spinning lab- 

 oratory of Clemson College, were helping to speed the processes of 

 fiber analysis and the interpretation of experimental results by origi- 

 nating and calibrating methods for successfully spinning small sam- 

 ples of cotton into yarns, and by developing a systematic and com- 

 prehensive series of visual standards for accurately evaluating yarn 

 appearance. These two achievements did much to give practical 

 application and effect to the new and rapidly developing fiber science. 

 The teamwork of Webb and Campbell during the pioneer years was 

 outstanding and proved highly advantageous to furthering the 

 objectives of the broad program. During the latter part of the 

 same period, Campbell with the aid of Clarence Asbill, a skilled en- 

 gineer with great originality of mind, developed preliminaiy speci- 

 fications, designs, and plans for building a small-scale textile slasher 

 wliich, at that time, constituted the bottleneck to weaving any fabrics 

 from small lots of yarn. This project was carried to conclusion in 

 later years by other workers following the leads of Campbell and As- 

 bill. Thus, it is now possible to weave small samples of fabric from 

 small lots of yarn, in connection with various cotton research and test- 

 ing programs, and this development has given further practical appli- 

 cation and effect to cotton fiber technology. Asbill was subsequently 

 to add impressively to his inventions of needed apparatus at the De- 

 partment's Southern Regional Laboratory and at the North Caro- 

 lina State College where he is now engaged in advanced instrument 

 designing. 



Meanwhile the Southern Regional Research Laboratory at New Or- 

 leans, now a part of USDA's Agricultural Research Service, was driv- 

 ing ahead on a program of a different kind. Research up to this time 

 had been aimed at isolating the elements of quality in cotton fibers, 

 evaluating them singly and in combination, and at establishing an un- 

 derstanding of the relationships between fiber properties and the prop- 

 erties of cotton products. The southern laboratory approached the 

 subject from the standpoint of the products and, with the purpose of 

 stimulating an increased utilization of surplus cotton supplies, sought 

 to enhance the usefulness of cotton by modifying its properties the 



