BULLETIN 
Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry, Wm. A. Taylor, Chief. 
January 14, 1914. 
TESTS OF THE WASTE, TENSILE STRENGTH, AND BLEACHING 
■ QUALITIES OF THE DIFFERENT GRADES OF COTTON AS 
STANDARDIZED BY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. 
By N. A. Cobb, Agricultural Technologist in Charge of Agricultural Technology and 
Cotton Standardization. 
ORIGIN AND LOCATION OF THE EXPERIMENTS. 
The Department of Agriculture is not interested directly in textile 
work. Its interest is indirect and arises largely from the fact that 
Congress has selected it as the governmental agent for the establish- 
ment of the official cotton grades and for the study of cotton standard- 
ization. Many of the experiments of the department are therefore 
directed toward ascertaining certain facts that will assist in making 
the official cotton grades more useful and more reliable. 
The official cotton grades at present take cognizance of only two 
of the important qualities which determine the value of cotton, 
namely, (1) the color and (2) the amount of trash and waste matter. 
Any complete system of standardization of cotton will, however, 
have to take into consideration, among other things, (3) the length of 
the fiber, (4) the strength of the fiber, (5) the clinging qualities of the 
fiber, and (6) the bleaching qualities of the fiber. Most of these 
qualities are of such a nature that they can be satisfactorily deter- 
mined only by means of spinning tests, and it is for this reason that 
the department for several years has been making spinning tests 
with cotton in the mills and textile schools of the country. Experi- 
ments have been undertaken, among other places, at the following 
institutions and mills; Clemson Agricultural College, Textile Depart- 
ment, Clemson, S. C, Lowell Textile School, Lowell, Mass., Mississippi 
Agricultural and Mechanical College, Agricultural College, Miss. r 
North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical Textile School, Raleigh, 
N. C, and at various mills in South Carolina, North Carolina, Missouri, 
Virginia, Massachusetts, and Maine — about a dozen different mills in 
all. The experiments consisted in spinning cotton of known history 
into yarn under definite conditions as nearly as possible approaching 
commercial conditions. The qualities of the resulting yarn have 
been tested, and by comparison the desired results have been secured. 
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