COMMERCE AND SCIENCE IN COTTON GROWING. 



By J. W. MCCONNELL. 



Vice-Chairman of the Fine Cotton Spinners' and 

 Doublers' Association. 



THE primary object of this paper is to put before the 

 Congress some thoughts in regard to the objective which 

 should be aimed at by cotton breeders and cotton growers. 

 I propose to elaborate a letter on the same subject which I 

 wrote to The Textile Mercury in March, 1914. In writing 

 that letter I only had in view cottons suitable for fine 

 yarns; but I think the same considerations are pertinent, 

 at least to some extent, to the growing of all cottons. 

 It may be that in the United States of America cotton 

 has been grown hitherto so as to give fairly satisfactory 

 results to the grower without any very particular atten- 

 tion being given to scientific considerations. So far as 

 this is the case, it is due to the fact that cotton growing 

 in America is an inherited industry. For over a hundred 

 years practically for the whole period of commercial 

 cotton spinning America has been in the position of 

 supplying the standard cottons of the trade. It is prob- 

 ably more true to say that cotton spinning has been 

 elaborated so as to handle in the best possible way the 

 cotton from America, than to claim that America has 

 evolved cotton specially suitable for spinners. 



But whatever may be the truth about America, there 

 can be no question that in other countries success in 

 cotton growing can only be obtained by the application 

 of scientific principles. India affords an object-lesson of 

 a sad kind. There, there is a great industry, in the sense 

 that millions of acres of land are employed ; great, again, 

 in the sense that millions of people work at it; great, 

 again, in the sense that it is an ancient industry with a 

 great historic past. In every other sense it is a sadly 

 little industry. It produces a pitifully small quantity of 



