UTILIZATION OF PIMA COTTON. 13 
consists of motes, foreign matter, and " fly," or short fibers, which is 
partly a result- of careless picking and ginning, partly of unequal 
conditions of production, and in some cases the resuH of mixed seed. 
In the commercial production of -elect varieties of cotton uniform- 
ity ha- doubtless received less attention on the part of the growers 
than any other of the manufacturing requisites. Except a small 
quantity that has been produced by individual farmers rather than 
on a community basis, very little cotton that has ideal manufactur- 
ing qualities has been commercially produced. Though certain 
varieties having superior textile characteristics have been bred, care- 
less handling has kept satisfactory uniformity from being attained; 
hence the cotton heroin.- of Less value for spinning purposes. Manu- 
facturers who are producing high-grade fine yarns and fabrics fre- 
quently pay a premium for cotton that is free from waste and is uni- 
form in length and strength, from which class of cotton an incr< 
in production can be had, which means a decrease in the manul 
turing cost per pound: and there is n<> reason to believe that the grow- 
er- of Pima cotton will not receive a premium for well-selected and 
properly handled staple over that which is picked, ginned, and baled 
with no attention given to the different lengths and type- of fiber. 
In the various manufacturing processes the pickers, cards, and 
combers remove practically all the short fibers, mote-, trash, and 
other foreign matter. From cotton that i- to be made into fine 
yarns the pickers remove from 2 to 6 per cent of the waste; the 
cards remove from 6 to 10 per cent of the waste, the greater portion 
of which is short fibers known as flat, cylinder, and doffer strip-: 
the combers remove from 14 to 20 per cent of short fibers as waste. 
The percentage of waste removed by these machines depends upon 
the uniformity of the cotton as well as on the desired quality of 
finished product. However, the flat strips and comber waste are not 
a total loss to the manufacturers, as they can be made into low- 
count yarns and usually sell on the market for 40 to 75 per cent of 
the price of Middling cotton, depending upon the demand for this 
class of waste. 
The lack of uniformity is found not only in Pima cotton but also 
in other varieties, whether grown in the United States. Egypt, or 
elsewhere. The best varieties grown in Egypt are mixed, necessitat- 
ing much labor in sorting and blending after picking is completed. 
After his study of the cotton production in Egypt O. F. Cook (1) 
state- : 
Inspection of many cotton fields in different parts of Egypl shows that the 
—'■ailed Hindi cotton is a general contamination of the Egyptian stock, re- 
sponsible for a large amount of diversity and degeneration. Breeding experi- 
ments have shown that it is possible to secure a much higher degr< 
uniformity in Arizona than now exists in most of the cotton fields in Egypt. 
It i- practically useless to produce good cotton if by a careless 
system of harvesting and handling the superior cotton i- to be mixed 
with the inferior cotton, which must be separated in the mills by 
the expensive operations of picking, carding, and combing. Ii is 
not hoped to produce a cotton that will be so uniform that comb- 
ing — an operation by which the superior fibers are parallelized and 
the short fibers removed — will not be accessary in manufacturing 
fine yarn-, but this mixing of shorl inferior fibers with the best 
55163—23 4 
