14 BULLETIN 1444, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
QUALITY AS A FACTOR IN SUPPLY 
The quality of a crop affects the supply in two ways : It changes 
the total quantity of yarn obtainable and the relative supplies of 
more or less noncompeting cotton. The yarn outturn is affected 
particularly by the grade of the crop. Spinning tests conducted by 
the Department of Agriculture in 1917 showed that the total visible 
and invisible waste which occurred, from the time the cotton en- 
tered the opening machines until it passed through the cards, varied 
from 8.22 per cent for Middling Fair, the best grade, to as high as 
16.89 per cent for Good Ordinary. 8 The staple length and char- 
acter are also factors in determining poundage of yarn outturn, and, 
to some extent, color is a factor. 9 Grade is determined by weather 
and the care used in harvesting and ginning. Color is largely a 
result of exposure and frost. Character in cotton may be said to 
be the resultant of variety influenced by seasonal conditions. 
Staple length is the important factor in determining the count 
of the yarn (fineness). Based on staple length there are three 
more or less noncompeting groups of cotton. Cotton under % 
inch in length is known as short cotton. It can be used in making- 
only the very low counts of yarn. The bulk of the supply of this 
cotton comes from India and China. The medium lengths, % 
to iy 8 inches, comprise the second group. It is sometimes called 
" bread and butter cotton " because of its many uses and com- 
parative cheapness. It may be used as a complete substitute for 
the first group and make better quality yarn, and it is used in 
making yarn that can not be made of snorter cotton. The United 
States grows most of this type of cotton. The third group is known 
as staple cotton, and is made up of cottons iy s inches or more in 
length of staple. These may be substituted for the others, but are 
usually used to make cloth requiring very strong or very fine yarn. 
The main sources of supply for cottons of this group are Egypt, 
United States, Peru, and Brazil. An oversupply of the cotton in 
any one group may tend to depress prices in the other groups, but 
the decline in the oversupplied group will be much greater. 
CARRYOVER 
The gin-bale carry over is the quantity of countable cotton on 
hand at the beginning of the commercial year, which in most coun- 
tries is August 1. Satisfactory carryover figures are exceedingly 
difficult to obtain. 
The census makes an estimate of the carryover of gin-bale cotton 
in the United States in an item of stocks as of August 1. These 
include cotton (1) in consuming establishments, (2) in public stor- 
age and at compresses, and (3) estimated quantity elsewhere. The 
New Orleans Cotton Exchange publishes carryover figures for the 
United States. 
Estimates of the world's carryover of American cotton are pub- 
lished by several agencies. Only those of the United States Bureau 
of the Census are here described. The census began its estimates 
8 Dean, William S.. and Tatlor, Fred, manufacturing tests of the official 
COTTON STANDARDS FOR GRADE. U. S. Dept. Agr. Bui. 591. 1917. 
9 See U. S. Dept. Agr. Bulls. Nos. 121, 946, 990, and 1148. 
