Excerpt from the report Summary: During the last few years the domestic cotton industry, the United States Department of Agriculture, and others, have been concerned about criticisms of the American cotton hale package, and have made concerted efforts to improve the package. As a part of this effort (and upon the recommendations of and in active cooperation with industry representatives), the Agricultural Marketing Service inaugurated in 1955-56 a fairly broad study of the problems and economic considerations involved. This report deals with those phases of the study which relate to (1) the cleaning of cotton bale surfaces and other preprocessing problems and practices of domestic spinners resulting from the condition of the bale packages as received by the mills, and (2) the effects of these practices and problems on mill costs.