‘ 
10 BULLETIN 742, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
It is possible to maintain this uniformity of type in the American 
crop if the growers exercise proper care in the selection of seed for 
planting. Unless the seed is selected carefully and consistent effort 
is made by good tillage and careful picking and ginning to maintain 
uniformly high quality in the crop, it will be difficult, if not im- 
possible, to maintain the new industry on a profitable basis. 
EARLY ATTEMPTS TO,ESTABLISH EGYPTIAN-COTTON GROWING 
IN THE UNITED STATES. 
The Department of Agriculture on several occasions prior to 1900 
imported seed of Egyptian cotton and distributed it in small lots to 
farmers throughout the cotton belt. This procedure did not result in 
establishing the industry in any locality, a fact that ceased to be sur- 
prising when the necessity for community action in the commercial 
production of a new type of cotton came to be appreciated. The tests 
of the imported seed in various localities gave diverse results as to 
yield and quality of the fiber produced, but serious difficulties were 
always encountered in communities where Upland cotton was already 
being grown. Some of these difficulties may be stated as follows: 
(1) Pickers disliked the small bolls, which made it appear that picking would 
be much more difficult and expensive than in the case of the big-bolled Upland 
types which are generally popular in the South. 
(2) Only saw gins were available for sevarating the, fiber from the seed, and 
as a result the fiber was invariably injured in ginning. 
(3) Marketing small lots of a new type of fiber, with which the local buyers 
were unfamiliar, was found to be extremely difficult. 
(4) The Egyptian cotton was grown in the neighborhood of fields: of Upland 
cotton, and consequently it was found impossible to keep the seed pure. 
The seed of several of the best varieties grown in Egypt was im- 
ported in larger quantities by Mr. David Fairchild following his 
visit to that country in 1900 as an agricultural explorer for the 
Department of Agriculture Dr. H. J. Webber, then in charge of 
the plant-breeding work with cotton in the Department of Agricul- 
ture, undertook systematic tests of these varieties during the next two 
or three years at various localities in the cotton belt and in irrigated 
districts of the Southwest. In the main cotton belt fairly favorable 
results were obtained in certain localities, but owing to the difficulties 
mentioned the experiments did not result in the establishment of 
commercial production. 
BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 
The irrigated lands of southern Arizona and southeastern Cali- 
fornia, where the climatic conditions more nearly resemble those of 
Egypt than in the.cotton belt, were found to offer the most promis- 
i The first plantings of Egyptian cotton in Arizona appear to have been made with 
some of this seed, which was sent to the State (then the Territorial) experiment farm at 
Phoenix and to Dr. A. J. Chandler, at Mesa. This was a year or two before the beginning 
of experimental work with this crop in Arizona by the Department of Agriculture. 
