What Cotton Has; What It Needs

Walter M. Scott.

Because the most particular buyer in the world today is undoubtedly the American housewife, her selection of textile materials provides an index to the esteem in which cotton is held.

A survey by the Department of Agriculture in 1947 disclosed that women prefer cotton in 11 out of 16 important ready-made apparel and household uses.

Their choice of cotton for the 11 uses was beyond question. For every woman who favored some other material, 29 preferred cotton for house dresses, 24 for anklets, 10 for aprons, 7 for bedspreads, 6 for dish towels and pajamas, 4 for curtains, 3 for part-wool blankets, and 2 for nightgowns, raincoats, and tablecloths. The women also placed cotton on a par with any other material for the ready-made summer street dresses. Women who made their own clothes chose cotton by an overwhelming majority-43 to 1 for house dresses and nearly 2 to 1 for summer street dresses.

The products considered in the survey for which most women ranked cotton lower than other materials were winter street dresses, hosiery, slips, and short-sleeved blouses.

Such a reputation among homemakers alone would be good evidence of the ability of cotton to meet modern standards of performance. But industry provides further evidence. The number of industrial uses for cotton runs into the hundreds, and the choice of cotton is overwhelming in many instances industrial thread, awnings, tents and tarpaulins, industrial hoses, bags, and upholstery felts. Large quantities of cotton also go into protective coverings or insulation for electrical wires.

The reason for such a preference, which now has endured for centuries, is simple. Cotton can give the products made from it many desirable characteristics. Cotton is versatile. Some of its qualities can be successfully duplicated, but the incorporation of all of its desirable traits in any one synthetic fiber has proved impossible so far. Its variety of desirable properties extends the number of products for which it is suitable; the combination of many useful qualities in a single item is also possible. Synthetic fibers as a rule, must sacrifice some valuable characteristics to obtain adequacy in others.

Cotton is tractable; it can be modified chemically. Many of the qualities in which cotton naturally is superior to other fibers thus can be enhanced, and other qualities for which cotton is not noted can be changed as needed for highly satisfactory end uses.

End use means the form in which a product reaches the ultimate user. If this be the yardstick by which cotton is evaluated, homemakers' reasons for preferring cotton for many uses and for disliking it for some other uses are significant. Therefore, in the survey I mentioned, women were asked why they did or did not choose cotton.

High on their list of reasons for preferring cotton were its good wearing qualities, its launderability, and its appearance after laundering. For some household articles, such as towels, they particularly liked the absorbent ability of cotton and its lack of shedding or Tinting. In curtains, they said, it was less likely than other materials to deteriorate in the sunlight. Their chief objections to cotton were when certain aspects of appearance were dominant.

The scientist makes another kind of appraisal, a separate evaluation of each aspect of quality wearability, appearance, and what happens to a fabric in the washing machine.

Launderability includes a quick rate of drying, colorfastness, dimensional stability, and other qualities. Appearance is the sum of such aspects as crease resistance, luster, drape, and color. Some of these individual components overlap; for one instance, high tensile strength, a requirement of long-wearing qualities, also influences washability.

Perhaps the leading virtue of cotton is its high tensile strength its ability to resist tearing or breaking when it is under stress. The scientist defines tensile strength as the breaking strength of a material expressed in force per unit of cross-sectional area of the original specimen. By such measurement, the strength of cotton is roughly equivalent to that of structural steel. Strength gives cotton an advantage in many uses, including women's foundation garments, thread, upholstery materials, warp yarns for carpet backs, bags, and twine.

A remarkable feature of the tensile strength of cotton is that it becomes appreciably stronger when it is wet. Most other fibers lose strength when they absorb moisture. Some lose more than half of their original strength. The advantage to cotton is obvious, because fabrics frequently are exposed to water (in awnings, raincoats, bath cloths, and towels) and to dampness from perspiration in clothing. The ability of cotton materials to stand up under many washings is largely due to their high strength when wet.

Another good quality of cotton fabric is dimensional stability resistance to permanent change in its length or width. High dimensional stability makes for minimum shrinkage and loss of shape during washing and is essential in practically all household articles and clothing, as well as in many industrial products. Cotton can be stabilized by mechanical means alone, so that washing will not shrink it more than 1 percent in either direction.

Rayons, on the other hand, are difficult to stabilize by mechanical means, and chemical treatments to improve their dimensional stability frequently sacrifice strength and other desirable properties.

Cotton resists abrasion, or friction with other materials. It surpasses wool, silk, and rayon in that quality, which is particularly important in children's play suits, men's shirts and work clothes, everyday dresses, and all outdoor garments in which serviceability is a major consideration. It is an essential quality in shoelaces, bags, thread, beltings, and many other items subject to rubbing against other materials in use. During the Second World War, soldiers crawling over logs, along the ground, or through brush barricades, and squeezing through narrow passages, between brick walls, and the like, gave cotton garments a tremendous test for abrasion resistance and cotton played its part with outstanding efficiency.

Cotton is the principal fiber used where absorption is a basic requirement. Combining the inherent ability to dry quickly with a tremendous capacity and rate for taking up and holding water, it is naturally superior to many other fabrics in humid climates, where human comfort depends on clothing that will rapidly absorb perspiration and as rapidly permit its evaporation. Furthermore, a method of chemical treatment has been developed that increases the normal absorbency so essential in dish towels, bath towels, handkerchiefs, diapers, and socks.

When service requirements involve protection from water rather than water absorbency, cotton fabrics also are suitable. They are amenable to water-repellency and waterproofing treatments. Various types of finishes, some of which retain their effectiveness against water after several launderings or dry cleanings, are used commercially on cotton goods. Besides, cotton fibers tend to swell when they are wet and thus to seal the fabric against the penetration of water. Although the swelling is not quite so great in cotton as in rayon. the characteristic, combined with the increase in its as strength in the presence of moisture, has made cotton desirable for fabrics such as those adopted by the Army for protective outer garments for the field. These fabrics are made from tightly constructed cottons, which have a soft-twisted filling for quick swelling on contact with water.

Water-repellent cotton fabrics also find extensive application in awnings, tents, and truck and boat covers, and in many other places where people or property need protection from rain.

A characteristic that makes cotton especially suitable for industrial use tire cord, machinery belts, twine is its long flex life. Cotton survives repeated bending over a longer period of time than most other fibers.

Because of its superior ability to make contact with resins and rubber, cotton long kept a major part of most textile markets where that property is important, such as oilcloth and other coated fabrics, laminated plastics made with fabric, tire cord, and beltings.

SUCH AN ARRAY of excellent properties enabled cotton for many years to hold many end-use markets without challenge. Recently, however, tremendous efforts to improve competing materials have made all who grow, manufacture, or use cotton aware of its shortcomings, as well as its virtues. Cotton lacks inherent qualities needed for some specific uses. Also, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the superiority of the most desirable properties is relative; even those properties might lose their importance if synthetic fibers are improved further. Some of them are mentioned in this over-all introductory article and discussed in further detail in the articles that follow.

A study of major end-use markets made for a subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture in 1947 indicated that improvement is needed in 31 quality characteristics of cotton, including many in which it is now admittedly superior to other fibers. A 10-percent increase in the consumption of cotton might be achieved by improving some of the qualities.

Particularly in need of improvement if cotton is to achieve and maintain a strong foothold in the women's apparel market are properties that affect appearance--draping, resiliency, crease resistance, and luster, factors that are important in the creation of fashionable clothes. Indeed, many stylists pass over cotton because it does not fit smoothly or hang gracefully, is easily mussed, and lacks the silklike sheen many women prefer for dress-up occasions. We hope that cotton will one day overcome those deficiencies. For instance, industry reported developments in 1948 in the field of resin treatments to produce wrinkle resistance in cotton.

New resins have been made available to the textile industry in commercial quantities, and cotton finishers are applying them to certain types of dress goods with satisfactory results. The treatments are expected to increase markedly the popularity of cotton for summer dresses and suits.

Another factor is color. The colors that can be obtained on cotton depend on the dyeing properties of the fiber. Cotton outdoes its competitors in the acceptance of fast dyes, and thus has advantages over other fibers, but the very nature of cotton makes for certain limitations in getting specific color effects that are particularly desirable from the standpoint of fashion. For example, dyeing characteristics restrict the production of cotton materials in colors as lively as may be obtained on silk, or as warm and restful as may be given wool and some synthetic fibers.