FIBERS FROM COTTON

The Utilization of American Cotton

Robert B. Evans.

To tell of cotton one has to use big figures and big statements.

Cotton is man's main reliance for clothing and other textiles. It enters into the daily life of more of the world's peoples than any other product except salt.

Practically the entire cotton crop is used as raw material for manufacturing, and that industry is one of the largest industries in the United States and the most important based on an agricultural commodity.

Our modern machine age had its beginnings in the efforts during the eighteenth century to spin and weave cotton mechanically. During the past 200 years, the history of western Europe, the Orient, and America has been shaped to a great extent by the ability Of countries to produce the fiber and process it, and by their need for using it.

Cotton became King Cotton when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1783. The gin, which pulls the cotton fibers off the cottonseed, did away with the tedious hand-separating job required until then. Cotton production in the United States immediately began the upward march that made this Country the main source of the world's Supply. Production climbed from 4,184 500-pound gross bales in 1791 to 10.3million bales in 1900. It averaged 12.5 million bales annually in 1910 to 1919, 13.1 million bales in 1920 to 1929, 13.2 million bales in 1930 to 1939, and 12 million bales in 1940 to 1949. The 1949 crop of 16.1 million bales, the fourth largest in history, was followed in 1950 by one of only 9.9 million bales.

World production of cotton reached its peak just before the Second World War. The 1935 to 1939 annual average was 31.7 million 500-pound gross bales, of which 18.6 million bales was grown outside the United States. The world total declined to a low of 21.1 million bales in 1945, but went up to 31.2 million bales in 1949. Of the 1949 total, the United States produced 16.1 million bales, India and Pakistan, 3.3 million bales; the Soviet Union, 2.7 million bales; China, 1.7 million bales; Egypt, 1.7 million bales; Brazil, 1.6 million bales; and Mexico, 1.0 million bales. Some 40 other countries grew the remaining 3.1 million bales.

The world output of 31.2 million bales in 1949 weighed 7.5 million net tons. Spun and woven into fabric, that would be enough to make 19 million miles of 40-inch-wide sheeting, or enough to provide nine shirts or house dresses, or three sheets, for every person in the world.

COTTON is to textiles what iron is to metals. Although there are perhaps 700 plants that have been used by man for fibers, only a few have proved suitable, in qualities and cost, for large-scale economic development. Cotton is the giant among them. It alone accounted for more than half the 25.5-billion-pound world production of the principal textile fibers in 1949. There are two reasons for cotton's hold on world fiber markets : Cotton has an excellent all-around combination of properties that makes it technologically suitable for a wide range of clothing, household, and industrial products. It can be grown in large quantities at relatively low costs. The end uses of other textile fibers are more or less specialized, but there are few end uses in the entire textile field where cotton is not a factor.

Other fibers, in order of quantities produced, are jute, rayon, wool, the hard fibers, flax, hemp, nylon, and silk. Jute, grown in Pakistan and India and used throughout the world mainly for bags and bagging, accounted for 12 percent of the world's production of fiber in 1949. Wool, used for clothing, upholstery, blankets, carpets, and similar articles, accounted for another 9 percent of the total. Rayon, used mostly in clothing but with some household and industrial uses, accounted for 11 percent. World production of rayon climbed rapidly from 457 million pounds in 1930 to a peak of 2,817 million pounds in 1941, with most of the increase in Germany, Japan, and Italy. It declined during the Second World War to a low of 1,398 million pounds in 1945, but since then has been reviving rapidly and was up to 2,690 million pounds in 1949. Hard fibers--abaca ( Manila) , sisal, and henequen--are used almost entirely for cordage and twine. Flax, once the most important vegetable fiber, is used mostly for household linens and clothing. Hemp is used mainly for cordage, twine, and bags. Silk, the most expensive fiber in common use, has given way somewhat to rayon and nylon. Nylon is growing rapidly in importance, first for women's hosiery, and now for many other things, but the total production was still relatively small in 1950.

Also, there is a limited production of other new man-made fibers, such as glass fiber; Saran, Vinyon, Orlon, and Dynel made of synthetic resins; and Vicara and Ardil, made of corn protein and peanut protein, respectively. Asbestos, the only important natural mineral fiber, is used for such products as brake linings, pump packings, and fire-resistant clothing. A matter of interest, more than economics, is the use of metal yarns, raffia, thin strips of bamboo, leather, and many other materials by hand weavers and fabric designers.

COTTON IS AS IMPORTANT as a farm crop as it is as a textile fiber. It is grown on 1.2 million of our 5.9 million farms. Except from 1945 to 1947, when wheat outranked it, cotton has been the most important cash crop of the entire United States. In 1949 it returned to farmers a total income of 2.6 billion dollars. For more than a century it has been the South's dominant agricultural commodity. This single crop was the source of more than half of the South's cash farm income in 1929, and 36 percent of it in 1949. Even in California, far west of the traditional Cotton Belt, cotton brought in more dollars than any other crop in 1947, 1948, and 1949 more even than oranges and grapes. That does not mean that cotton is as valuable a source of income as livestock, or as important a crop as corn, the bulk of which is fed to livestock. Cotton's contribution to farm income is particularly significant because cotton lint is not used for food or feed, and thus does not compete with other crops for those markets. Its market is not bounded by the human or animal stomach-, it is our most important farm crop from an industrial standpoint.

In its raw state cotton cannot meet the needs of man. It must first pass through a series of processing and marketing steps.

The first step in its progress from plantation to mill is its transportation by wagon or truck to one of the 8,000-odd active cotton gins scattered through the Cotton Belt. Here the lint fibers are torn from the seed, compressed, and baled. Lint cotton and cottonseed follow different processing and utilization paths from the gin. For every pound of lint cotton produced, there is an output of 1.7 pounds of cottonseed, which moves into a wide range of food, feed, and industrial products. Cottonseed by itself is the United States eighth most important cash crop, with receipts totaling 256 million dollars in 1949, compared with 2,380 million dollars for cotton.

After cotton has been ginned, it enters a marketing system which grades, classifies, compresses, stores, insures, transports, finances, and delivers it in even-running uniform lots to the cotton mill. These tasks involve the efforts of large numbers of people, but they are performed so efficiently that the total price spread between farm and mill for cotton grown near Abilene, Tex., and delivered in South Carolina was 2.8 cents a pound in October 1950. Cotton may follow many marketing routes between farm and mill, but the dominant pattern is : Producer to local buyer; local buyer to cotton market; market to mill through mill buyer, or to foreign importer.