' \ i OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PICKING SCENE. A great field white with bursting bolls and dotted by a score or more of dusky pickers, and the haunting melody of old-time negro songs — here indeed is a sight and a sound never to be forgotten. C6e JFarm JLtfitatp COTTON Its Cultivation, Marketing, Manufacture, and the Problems of the Cotton World BY CHARLES WILLIAM BURKETT Professor of Agriculture, North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, AND CLARENCE HAMILTON POE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF r LONDON Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd. 1907 in New fork, U. S. A. All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages including the Scandinavian Yonder bird, Which floats, as if at rest, In those blue tracts above the thunder, where No vapors cloud the stainless air, And never sound is heard, Unless at such rare time When, from the City of the Blest, Rings down some golden chime, Sees not from his high place, So vast a cirque of summer space As widens round me in one mighty field, Which, rimmed by seas and sands, Doth hail its earliest daylight in the beams Of gray Atlantic dawns; And, broad as realms made up of many lands, Is lost afar Behind the crimson hills and purple lawns Of sunset, among plains which roll their streams Against the Evening Star ! And lo ! To the remotest point of sight, Although I gaze upon no waste of snow, The endless field is white; And the whole landscape glows, For many a shining league away, With such accumulated light As Polar lands would flash beneath a tropic day ! — From "The Cotton Boll," by Henry Timrod. 166954 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION: HAIL, THE KING! . 3 SECTION I.— KING COTTON: HIS REALM AND HIS SUBJECTS CHAPTER I. — History of Cotton: From Ancient India to Our Own Time . '••".'• . . .13 CHAPTER II. — Acreage and Production: Where the World's Supply is Grown . ... . .20 CHAPTER III. — Does Foreign Competition Threaten the South 's Supremacy ? . . . .27 CHAPTER IV.— The Men Who Make Cotton: Whites and Blacks; Planters and Tenants . . .35 CHAPTER V. — A 25,000,000 Bale Crop: Will the South Be Ready When the World Demands It ? . .42 CHAPTER VI.— Cotton: What It Means and Will Mean to the Southern States . . . .53 CHAPTER VII. — The Organization of Cotton Growers and What It May Accomplish . . . .58 CHAPTER VIII. — Stopping the Leaks in Cotton Profits . 68 SECTION II.— THE COTTON PLANT: HOW IT GROWS AND IS GROWN CHAPTER IX. — Structure and Botanical Relations . 77 CHAPTER X. — Varieties of Cotton and Their Classification 85 viii CONTENTS— Continued PAGE CHAPTER XI. — Breeding Up the Cotton Plant . .93 CHAPTER XII. — The King's Realm : The Land of Sunshine 104 CHAPTER XIII. — Soils and .How to Handle Them . 109 CHAPTER XIV.— Bringing Exhausted Soils Back to Life 115 CHAPTER XV. — Cotton Unique : A Self-Supporting Crop . 120 CHAPTER XVI.— Buying Fertility for the Soil . .126 CHAPTER XVII. — Farm-Made Manures : SavingFertility for the Soil . . . . . .134 CHAPTER XVIII. — Home-Mixing of Fertilizers: Saving the Manufacturer's Profit . . • .139 CHAPTER XIX. — The Cotton Farmer's Equipment of Tools 147 CHAPTER XX.— Culture From Seed to Boll . .153 CHAPTER XXL— The Ills That Cotton Is Heir To .165 CHAPTER XXII.— Insect Enemies of the Cotton Plant . 175 CHAPTER XXI 1 1.— Harvest Time in the Cotton Field . 194 CHAPTER XXIV.— What Does It Cost to Make Cotton ? . 200 SECTION III.— MARKETING AND PRICES CHAPTER XXV. — Preparing for Marketing: The Work of the Gin . . . . v . 215 CHAPTER XXVI. — Marketing : The Trip to the Spindle . 224 CHAPTER XXVIL— The Unceasing Contest Between Bulls and Bears ...... 234 CHAPTER XXVIII.— Statistics: How the World Watches While the Plant Grows . . . .249 CHAPTER XXIX.— Prices : The Puzzling Problem of Cotton Values . 260 CONTENTS— CWmwed ix PAGE SECTION IV.— MANUFACTURES AND BY- PRODUCTS CHAPTER XXX. — Cottonseed: Once an Outcast; Now a Prince ...... 275 CHAPTER XXXI.— Cotton Oil: The King Feeds as Well as Clothes His Subjects . . . .282 CHAPTER XXXII. — Meal and Hulls : King Cotton Also Feeds Our Flocks and Herds . . . 290 CHAPTER XXXIII. — The Rise of Cotton Manufacturing . 301 CHAPTER XXXIV.— The Cotton Factory in the Southern States . . . . . .311 CHAPTER XXXV.— The Making of Cotton Goods .319 CHAPTER XXXVI. — CONCLUSION — THE EPIC OF COTTON THAT is YET TO BE WRITTEN • . 330 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Picking Scene ....... Frontispiece FACING PAGE A Monarch that Brooks no Rivals . . . . . 16 Part of Our $410,000,000 in Cotton Export Values ... 17 Production of Cotton 1850 to 1900 . . . . . 22 Cotton Statistics . . . . . , . . v . ' 23 Production of Cotton 1900 (by States) . . . . 34 Breaking Land for Egyptian Cotton .-.*;. . . 35 How The Negro Tenants Live . . , . J. . 38 Negro Pickers at Work and at Home . . . - . 39 Cotton Picking in the Lowlands . . . . '. . 50 "Light-hearted, good-natured and aisily lynched." (Mr. Dooley) 51 Cotton Bolls, Fibres Other than Cotton ,.'v . . . 56 The Mechanical Cotton Picker .... . .57 Soft and Compressed Bales : Gathering Samples * . 64 More Cotton Statistics . . . . . .65 Southern Views . . . . . . , . 72 More Scenes from Dixie . . . . . . . 73 The Cotton Association is a Factor to be Reckoned with . . 80 Holding for Better Prices . . ' . . . . .'81 Varieties of Cotton . . . . . . . . 90 Varieties of Cotton . . . . . . . .91 Varieties of Cotton . . . . .' . . . 94 Economical and Expensive Cotton-making . . ... 95 Improvement of Cotton . ... . . . 100 Where Cotton Grows Best . ... . . .101 Getting Fertilizer from the Air . . . . , . 116 Cultivating the Crop . . . . . . . .117 The Rescue of Old Lands . . . • • . . 122 Old-fashioned Methods Not Yet Forgotten , . • • 123 Diagram Showing Relative Quantities of Nitrogen, Potash and Phosphoric Acid Required for the Production of an Average Yield (per Acre) of Corn, Wheat, etc.; Crimson Clover; Cotton- Cultivation in its Final Stage 126 ILLUSTRATIONS— Confmwed FACING PAGE Two Ways of Fertilizing .... .. .127 Soils and Their Improvement . . . . ...... 134 Comparative Quantities of Plant Food in Different Fertilizing Ingredients ........ * 135 Modern Cotton Making , . 146 "How much does it weigh?" . . . . . 147 Young Plants Just After Germination . . . . > . 164 As Destructive as an Invading Army — The Boll Weevil . .165 Starting the Crop , . 180 The Alpha and Omega of Cotton Making . . . , 181 The Boll Weevil's Conquest of Texas 188 Before the Cotton Factory Came 189 Transformations of Cotton Bollworm (Heliothis armiger Hubri) Double page . 188-189 White for the Harvest . . . . . . ' . .200 Making Cotton Without Hand Chopping . . .201 Ginning and Baling the Cotton . ... 208 Hope and Realization 209 Waiting Turns at the Gin 228 A Look on the Inside .229 Cotton after Baling 230 *' How Much Do I Git at Fifty Saints a Hund'ed?" . . 231 Stages of Cotton Picking 242 Nerve Centres of Cotton Finance ...... 243 Interior of New York Cotton Exchange ..... 244 Condition of the Cotton Crop 245 The Ebb and Flow of Cotton Prices 260 In and About a Cotton Factory . . ... 261 Cottonseed, the Finest Cattle Food . . . . .276 Cotton Seed Huller . .... 277 Interior View of Cotton Mill . . . . . .312 Cotton Manufacturing in the South . . . ,313 Manufacturing: Fancy Dobby Loom ..... 320 Cotton Fabrics. 321 INTRODUCTION: HAIL, THE KING! OF THE | UNIVERSITY | r- INTRODUCTION: HAIL, THE KING! "Cotton — what a royal plant it is!" Henry Grady once exclaimed: "The world waits in at- tendance on its growth; the shower that falls whis- pering on its leaves is heard around the earth; the sun that shines on it is tempered by the prayers of all the people; the frost that chills it and the dew that descends from the stars are noted, and the tres- pass of a little worm upon its green leaf is more to England than the advance of the Russian army on her Asian outposts. It is gold from the instant it puts forth its tiny shoot. Its fibre is current in every bank and when, loosing its fleeces to the sun, it floats a sunny banner that glorifies the fields of the humble farmer, that man is marshaled under a flag that will compel the allegiance of the world and wring a subsidy from every nation on earth." THE ONE CROP FOR WHICH NATURE HAS NO SUBSTITUTE And in this flight of eloquence the Georgia ora- tor did not overestimate the importance of the South's great staple crop. We do not exaggerate when we claim that no other plant in all the vege- table kingdom is of so much importance to the hu- man race. Destroy any fruit plant in the world, and men would grow other fruits. Let any lumber (3) 4 COTTON tree become extinct to-morrow, and other trees will take its place and our building go on as before. Even if corn or wheat or rice should perish from the earth, we could grow enough of the other crop, supplemented by rice, oats, barley, rye, peas, beans, etc., to feed both man and beast with com- fort. But there is no substitute for cotton that can be cultivated on a large scale; no substitute, animal or vegetable product, with which civilization's pres- ent demand for clothing could be supplied. Nor is there any plant with a history more mar- velous or more romantic — more suggestive of the legend and mythology of its Oriental home where it first began to serve mankind. If Frank Norris had lived in the South instead of California, what an Epic of the Cotton he might have given us- — what a story of Cotton, responding only to the warmth of a Southern sun, and yielding a richer fleece than ever Jason dreamed of; Cotton, whose influence did most to bring us an alien race from Africa, and then did most to perpetuate in Ameri- ca the institution of human slavery; Cotton, on which a "Dixie Land, the Land of Cotton," once built its hopes while it waged one of the greatest wars of modern times; Cotton, which helped the vanquished people to their feet again, and now bids fair to restore them to a proud position in wealth and industry! THE BASIS OF THE WORLDS DOMINANT INDUSTRY It is probably not too much to say that cotton is now the basis of the dominant industry of the globe. In their primary forms the iron and s^el products of the world represent a value of onljA COTTON 5 $1,700,000,000 yearly, while the estimated value of the world's annual output of cotton goods is $2,000,000,000. On cotton most of the human race depends for clothing — three times as much cotton as wool being produced, and the world's wool production having decreased from 2,750,000 bales in 1895 to 1,750,000 in 1905, while in the same period the world's cotton supply has grown from 10,304,000 bales to 17,782,000 bales. And of this enormous cotton supply three-fourths is grown in the Southern section of the United States. Twice the world's total gold output last year would have been required to pay Southern farmers for lint and seed; three-fourths of the capital stock of all the National Banks in the country would have been inadequate, COTTON EXPORTS EXCEED IN VALUE ALL OTHEE AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL EXPORTS Among our American export crops cotton is a monarch that brooks no rivals. According to a signed statement furnished the writer by Mr. O. P. Austin, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, De- partment of Commerce and Labor, January 23, 1906, the total value of our exports of cottonseed and cottonseed products for the year ending June 30, 1905 (raw cotton alone $381,000,000), was $410,657,752 as against $410,205,653 for "all other agricultural exports." In other words, take all other animal and vegetable products exported any year — wheat, corn, barley, oats, rye, flour, meal, oatmeal, fruits, vegetables, liquors, tobacco, wine, cattle, hogs, horses, sheep, beef, pork, mut- ton, butter, cheese, canned goods, lard, oils, wool, 6 COTTON hides, skins, etc., etc., — the entire contribution, ex- cept cotton, furnished the outside world by every American farm, ranch, dairy, fruit farm and gar- den, from Maine to California, from Michigan to Texas, from Alaska to Hawaii, including the South's own not unimportant share — take all this, and with the proceeds of one year's cotton and cot- tonseed exports, the Southern cotton-grower can buy the whole colossal aggregation, still have a surplus of several hundred thousand left as pin money, and be ready to start business again with the more than $200,000,000 he gets annually for supplying the 25,000,000 spindles of our own country. "If Europe during the past five years," says Mr. R. H. Edmonds, "had gathered together every dollar's worth of gold produced in all the mines of the earth and shipped it to the South, it would still have fallen $206,000,000 short of paying for that part of the cotton crop the South has sent beyond the seas." COTTON BOTH CLOTHES AND FEEDS MANKIND In many ways cotton stands out unique among all the plants that men grow. Not only is it the only crop which has greatly changed the destinies of nations and continents (but for cotton, slav- ery would not have so flourished in the South as to plunge America into a great civil war), but it is unique in that it contributes to a greater variety of human needs than any other plant that Providence has placed upon the earth. From pole to pole, in every zone and clime; from the cradle to the grave, in every stage of life; from prince to pauper, COTTON 7 among all sorts and conditions of men, it is of course the chief material used for clothing, but every year more and more of its products are brought to our tables, and it is called upon to feed a steadily increasing number of our flocks and herds. You get up in the morning from a bed clothed in cotton; you step out on a cotton rug; you let in the light by raising a cotton window-shade; you wash with soap made partly from cottonseed oil products; you dry your face on a cotton towel; you array yourself chiefly in cotton clothing; the "silk" in which your wife dresses is probably mercerized cotton ; at the breakfast table you do not get away from King Cotton; cottolene has probably taken the place of lard in the biscuit you eat ; the beef and the mutton were probably fattened on cottonseed meal and hulls; your "imported olive oil" is more likely from a Texas cotton farm than from an Ital- ian villa; your "butter" is probably a product of Southern cottonseed; the coal that burns in the fire may have been mined by the light of a cotton-oil lamp; the sheep from which your woolen clothing came were probably fed on cottonseed; the tonic you take may contain an extract of cotton root-bark; the tobacco you smoke not unlikely grew under a cotton cover and is put up in a cotton bag; your morning daily may be printed on cot- ton waste paper — and even in that Oriental skir- mish it tells about the contending forces were clothed in khaki duck, slept under cotton tents, cot- ton was an essential in the high explosives which were used, and when at last war had done its worst, surgery itself called cotton into requisition to aid the injured and dying. 8 COTTON THE HANDMAIDEN OF CIVILIZATION Cotton, furthermore, is also unique in that more largely than any other plant it contributes to the higher wants of man and more justly than any other plant may be termed the Handmaiden of Civiliza- tion. For while the lowest classes of men (and ani- mals) demand food, the demand for clothing and ornament is a mark of civilization. Even as far back as Eden itself, the desire for clothing was the first evidence of knowledge and conscience given by the first man and woman placed on earth. And with all races of mankind since, the progress of enlighten- ment has been largely registered by the advances in clothing. "Society is founded upon Cloth," was the doctrine of Carlyle's Teuf elsdrockh ; and he was not far wrong in declaring that "Man's earthly in- terests are all hooked and buttoned together, and held up, by Clothes. . . . Society sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths or mount to inane limboes, and in either case be no more." Of so much importance, then, is the crop we are to consider in this volume; the only one of the great staples for which no satisfactory substitute can be found; the only plant in the world that in a large measure both feeds and clothes mankind; the one plant most worthy of being reckoned the aid and ally of Civilization. Small wonder that more than two generations of men have called it King Cotton, and that its realm is as wide as the earth! Or as certain of our own bards has said: COTTON 9 "Where sleeps the poet who shall fitly sing The source wherefrom doth spring That mighty commerce which, confined To the mean channels of no selfish mart, Goes out to every shore Of this broad earth, and throngs the sea with shipi That bear no thunders; hushes hungry lips In alien lands; Joins with a delicate web remotest strands; And gladdening rich and poor, Doth gild Parisian domes, Or feed the cottage smoke of English homes, And only bounds its blessings by mankind 1" SECTION I. KING COTTON: HIS REALM AND HIS SUBJECTS CHAPTER I. THE HISTORY OF COTTON: FROM ANCIENT INDIA TO OUR OWN TIME We have no desire whatever to inflict upon the long-suffering reader any exhaustive review of the uninteresting remarks on cotton which pedantic scholars have picked up here and there in ancient literature. In fact, the only unpleasant task con- nected with the writing of this volume has been the enforced reading of several chapters of such mat- ter. Be patient then, gentle reader; we shall not prolong the agony. To find the first use of cotton by our race, we shall have to take the road to Mandalay and go back to a time five centuries before the birth of Christ — back to the dim past in the land of Buddha and Brahma? — and Kim; back to the scene of the great Mahabharata, and the other legendary glories of the dreamy Orient. Before the world had known the sway of a Caesar, long even before the age of Pericles, the old Hindoo law declared that "the sacrificial thread of the Brahman must be made of cotton," and as punishment for theft of cotton thread directed a fine three times the value of the article stolen. • (13) 14 COTTON CHINESE AND INDIAN CULTURE OF COTTON Herodotus tells us that "the thorax or cuirass sent by Amasis, King of Egypt, to Sparta" in 550 B. C., was "adorned with gold and the fleeces from trees" — and he goes on to explain that in India are trees "the fruit of which is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of a sheep." A crude sys- tem of hand-spinning, weaving and dyeing was early worked out by the Hindoos more than two thousand years ago — and singularly enough, in all of the centuries that followed this, intelligent peo- ple added practically no improvement to the cotton machinery the elders then planned. What Herod- otus reported as to equipment was practically the same as that which Marco Polo found, and there was no change from the time of Marco Polo to that of Arkwright. Across the Himalayan "Palace of the Snow," from the Hindoos is China ; and it was not a great while after India began to use cotton before the Chinese put it into their gardens and sang of it in their poems — evidently treating it, however, as a rare and beautiful, rather than as a useful, plant ; so that even in the sixth century after Christ it was a matter of marvel and record with the scribes of that day that the Emperor Outi had a rare robe made of cotton; and it was five hundred years later — in the days of Kubla Khan — before the manufacture of cotton among the Celestials became at all extensive. Since that time, however, cotton has been largely used for clothing the "heathen Chinee," and he has not only used his own product for this purpose, but has imported liberally from India and the Burmese provinces, COTTON 15 USE IN EGYPT AND INTRODUCTION INTO EUROPE BY THE MOORS As to the culture and use of cotton by the ancient Egyptians, there are differences of opinion among the doctors; but the weight of evidence indicates its use to a limited extent. Into Europe the cotton plant was brought a thou- sand years ago, the Moors having introduced its cul- ture in Spain "when the caliphate of Cordova was at the height of its power and magnificence." But the Spanish Christians looked with such disfavor on everything having to do with the Moors, or gave so little attention to it, that it was long before cot- ton found favor in the eyes of the Pope's subjects. In the fourteenth century it was at last given a chance to rejoice beneath the sunny Italian skies, and from there its culture spread to France and Greece. FOUND IN THE NEW WORLD In the New World cotton has been grown and used from the dateless past — certainly in clothing Peruvian mummies which had slept the sleep of death for centuries even before Pizarro came to disturb the dreams of the Incas; and among the treasures which Cortez wrested from the Mexican Montezuma and sent to Charles V. were "exquisite cotton fabrics dyed in various colors." In the West Indies especially cotton has always flourished. "In a word," says Mr. R. B. Handy, "everywhere between the parallels of 40° north latitude and 40° south latitude, with the exception of our present American 'Cotton Belt,' cotton, either in 16 COTTON its wild or cultivated state, was known and used at the date of the settlement of America." EARLY INDIAN WEAVING So much for the history of cotton production. As for its manufacture, we have already seen that the crude Indian plan of spinning and weaving was invented before the Christian Era; and this system followed the culture of cotton as it spread through Europe and Asia. So crude is the Indian equipment — a distaff for spinning and a loom com- posed of "a few sticks or reeds which the Indian carries about with him" — that the total value is only a few shillings. It is thought likely that the Flemings learned the art of using cotton from the Turkish crusaders, and that cotton manufacture was introduced into England in the fifteenth cen- tury by artisans who fled from Flanders. And be- fore leaving the subject of Indian weaving, it ought to be said that so wonderful is the skill of the Hin- doo that our finest machinery does not make goods equal to that which he produced with his primitive equipment. So fine and gossamer-like were the muslins of Dacca that they were called "webs of woven wind." Tavernier, writing in 1660, says of some Indian fabric, that "when a man puts it on, his skin appears as plainly through it as if he was quite naked; but the merchants are not permitted to transport it, for the Governor is obliged to send it all to the Great Mogul's seraglio, who use it to make the sultanesses' and the noblemen's wives' shifts and garments for the hot weather, and the King and the lords take great pleasure in beholding them in these shifts." A MONARCH THAT BROOKS NO RIVALS. Our cotton exports exceed in value all other exports combined— the total value of all other products from every American farm, ranch, dairy, fruit farm, stock farm, and garden, North, South, East and West. FART OF OUR $410,000,000 IN COTTON EXPORT VALUES. An ocean steamer taking on three bales of compressed cotton for export to English mills. COTTON 17 THE BEGINNING OF ENGLAND^ GREATEST INDUSTRY Our English ancestors, late in taking up the man- ufacture of cotton, even after beginning it allowed the industry to grow slowly. Spinning was done on the distaff, or at best on the one-thread spinning- wheel; and for weaving the hand-loom had known but little improvement since the days of the Caes- ars. Nor was there any kind of co-operation, any division of labor; each individual family at- tempted to carry on the entire process of spinning and weaving the cloth. But about 1760 we see the beginnings of a revolu- tion. The Manchester merchants then began to furnish cotton and linen yarn to weavers, paying a fixed price for spinning and weaving the product — and so the industry, hitherto primitive and cha- otic, began for the first time to take shape as a defin- ite, well-planned organization. Very soon after this the export of English goods began on a small scale, and with surprisingly satis- factory results from the very beginning. Prices were high, and the call for larger supplies insistent. But as the demand grew, the English spinner grew in desperation. Here was a world outside demand- ing that England clothe it; and yet, for two seem- ingly inexorable reasons, England could not. In the first place, while she could get yarn enough for the warp of the goods, she could not get enough cotton for the weft. And even if she could get cotton enough, she could not find labor enough to spin it. Doing her best with her one-thread wheel, she was spinning only as much as 50,000 of our modern spindles now turn out. 18 COTTON But these problems hardly began to be urgent be- fore they were solved. Hargreaves, Arkwright, Watt, Cartwright and others with their now fam- ous inventions, showed how to make one man's labor yield more than that of ten men had done before — and succeeded, even if the mad mob did scour the country in search of the new machines they believed would take the bread from the mouths of the laborers. AMERICA BEGINS TO SUPPLY ENGLAND'S WANTS And just as the English spinners learned how to spin and weave cotton fast enough, just then America answered her question as to where she could get the raw material. Cotton, on a small scale, was grown in America from the time of the earliest settlements. In 1621 the first planting was made in Virginia. The first permanent settlers in North Carolina in 1664 grew cotton as one of their principal crops, and forty years later cotton furnished one-fifth of the cloth- ing used by the people of the State. South Carolina began cotton culture in 1766, and Georgia early in the eighteenth century. "Barrels of cotton" and "bags of cotton" soon began to be mentioned as articles of export to Eng- land, and in 1751 it appears that one Henry Han- sen shipped "in good order and well conditioned, in and upon the good scow called the Mary, where- of is master under God, for this present voyage, Barnaby Badgars, and now riding in the harbour of New York, and by God's grace bound for Lon- don— to say, eighteen bales of cotton wool, being marked and numbered," etc. In 1786 Liverpool COTTON 19 imported 800 pounds of American cotton, in 1787, 16,350 pounds, in 1788, 58,500 pounds, and in 1792, 138,328 pounds. By this time it was America rather than England which was wrestling with a problem — and our prob- lem was how to separate the seed from the lint in quantities sufficient to supply the British demand. Eli Whitney solved it — just how and when we shall consider at greater length in a subsequent chapter. It is enough here to say that the year Whitney invented the cotton gin the South grew the equiva- lent of 10,000 400-pound bales; a hundred years later we grew 10,000,000 400-pound bales. CHAPTER II. ACREAGE AND PRODUCTION! WHERE THE WORLD'S SUPPLY IS GROWN Of the 17,782,440 bales making up the 1904-5 cotton crop of the world, it is estimated that the United States grew 13,420,440 bales, the East In- dies 2,960,000, Egypt 1,187,000, Brazil, etc., 215,- 000. In India, the oldest of cotton-producing coun- tries, the total yield of late years has been de- creasing. In 1893-94 India grew 2,993,000 bales (she had grown more than 3,000,000 three years before) and in 1903-4 she produced only 2,634,400 bales. The soil of India is well adapted to cotton growing, but the climate is largely unfavorable* — too wet in some places, too dry in others — and the average yield per acre is hardly more than half the average American yield. EGYPTIAN AND INDIAN PRODUCTION The abnormal demand for cotton during the Civil War stimulated Indian production, but "when the final result of the contest between America and India became apparent, America had gained com- mand of the market, and India was considered only as a supplementary source of supply, resorted to mainly in the event of a short crop in the West." (20) COTTON 21 But if India's interest in cotton growing seems to be waning, Egypt is even more surely awakening to her advantages as a cotton-producing country. In 1894-95 the land of the Pharaohs produced only 650,000 bales; in 1904-5 1,187,000 bales. Much of this increase is undoubtedly due to the great irrigation improvements of which the world has heard so much; but even without these the same steady growth which has marked the course of Egyptian cotton farming since its beginning would doubtless have been maintained. Egypt is the only country whose cotton trade did not decline when the South after Lee's surrender resumed her old place as the home of the fleecy staple. Maho Bey, aided by a Frenchman named Jumel, turned the attention of Egypt to cotton farming in 1820 — whence the name "Maho" and "Jumel" for Egyptian cotton — and she has taken no backward step in the 80 years since she began by sending 5,323 bales to Liverpool. THREE-FOURTHS OF WORLD'S SUPPLY GROWN IN THE SOUTH After all, however, the world gives little thought to India or Egypt or Brazil or Russia, when it comes to reckon on the next year's cotton supply. For more than three-fourths of this supply it must look to twelve American States and Territories, in ten of which it is the chief farm product. We have already seen that half our agricultural export val- ues is in cotton. On more than 1,000,000 American farms cotton is the principal source of income. Every foot of the surface of seven of our smaller States — land and water, hill and dale, field and 22 COTTON forest, marsh and barren — might be planted to cot- ton without equalling the area which the South an- nually plants to this favorite farm staple. And all this is in the face of the fact that cotton, more largely than any other American crop, is dependent upon hand labor. The increased cost by reason of this fact, however, naturally leads to correspond- ingly greater profits, so that in 1899 24,000,000 acres planted to cotton (and at prices very much lower than now obtain) produced $323,000,000 in values, while the wheat crop from more than twice this area was worth only $369,000,000, and the value of the corn crop from about four times the cotton acreage was only $828,000,000. "3 "C 3 a 3 - I III I III I III I III §1 §1 '22 ^ -= -o 5 I o 1 1 S | .1 g 1 11^ I J S H H O M WORLD'S PRODUCTION OF COTTON. COUNTRIES. 1904-05. Bales. 1903-04. Bales. 1902-03. Bales. 1901-02. Bales. United States. 13 420 440 9 841 671 10511 020 10,380,380 East Indies * 2 960 000 2634400 2 737 577 2 475 230 Egypt . 1 187 000 1 275 754 1 148 700 1 292 443 Brazil, etc. t 215000 307,516 329,390 265,896 Total 17 782 440 14,059 341 14,746,687 14,413,949 Consumption 52 weeks 15,506,225 14.010,428 14,436,589 14,414,908 Surplus from year's crop 2,776,185 48,9J8 290,098 «959 Visible and invisible stock : September 1 beginning year . 3,011,079 2,962,166 2,672,068 2,673,027 September 1 ending year. 5,287,264 3,011,079 2,962,166 2,672,068 * Includes India's exports to Europe, America and Japan, and mill consumption in India increased or decreased by excess or loss of stock at Bombay. •f Receipts into Europe from Brazil, Smyrna, Peru, West Indies, etc., and Japan and China cotton used in Japanese mills. a Deficiency in the year's new supply. The above statement indicates in compact form the year's supply of cotton (not including Russia) in each of the four years, the amount con- sumed, and also the extent to which visible and invisible stocks were increased or diminished. COMMERCIAL CROP BY STATES. 1904-05 Bales 1903-04 Bales 1902-03 Bales 1901-02 Bales Alabama 1,470,000 905,000 89,000 1,975,000 1,100,000 1,777,000 775,000 1,200,000 691,000 3,584,000 1,000,000 705,000 55,000 1,325,000 824,000 1,387,000 563,000 825,000 451,000 2,876,000 1,050,000 1,000,000 55,000 1,470,000 884,000 1,404,000 575,000 950,000 509,000 2,831,000 1,200,000 820,000 54,000 1,525,000 880,000 1,375,000 550,000 925,000 359,000 2,993,000 Arkansas Florida Georgia Louisiana Mississippi N. Carolina, etc. . South Carolina. . Tennessee, etc. . . Tex. & Indian Ter Total crop, bales 13,566,000 10,011,000 10,728,000- 10,681,000 COTTON STATISTICS. (Courtesy of Latham, Alexander & Co. ) COTTON 23 STATISTICS WHICH SHOW THE DEVELOPMENT OF COTTON GROWING I do not know that in any way we can get the subject more clearly before the reader than to give herewith the statistics of production by years for seventy years past, and the acreage and average yield by years since 1888: ACREAGE AND YIELD SINCE 1888 Season Acres Planted Crop Pounds Net Net Pounds per Acre Bales in Crop Net Weight per Bale Bales Per Acre 1888-89 19,362,073 3,260,996,300 168 6,938,290 470 0 36 1889-90 20,171,896 3,472,861,786 172 7,311,322 471 0 36 1890-91 20,809,053 4,092,678,381 196 8,652,597 473 0 41 1891-92 20,714,937 4,273,734,267 206 9,035,379 473 0 43 1892-93 18,067,924 3,182,673,375 176 6,700,365 475 0 37 1893-94 19,684,000 3,578,613,258 182 7,549,817 474 0 38 1894-95 21,454,000 4,792,205,484 223 9,901,251 484 0 46 1895-96 18,882,000 3,414,054,042 181 7,157,346 477 0 38 1896-97 22,341,000 4,177,548,828 187 8,757,964 477 0 39 1897-98 24,071,000 5,398,397,108 224 11,199,994 482 0 47 1898-99 23,572,000 5,513,396,760 232 11,274,840 489 0 48 1899-00 22,583,055 4,757,062,942 210 9,436,416 479 0 44 -1900-01 25,558,000 4,958,252,000 198 10,383,422 485 0 41 1901-02 27,532,000 5,176,016,000 188 10,680,680 , 483 0 39 1902-03 27,450,000 5,188,050,000 189 10,727,559 483 0 39 1903-04 28,907,000 4,885,283,000 169 10,011,374 483 0 35 1904-05 31,730,371 6,695,108,281 211 13,565,885 491 0 43 24 COTTON CROP, EXPORTS AND PRICES FOR SEVENTY YEARS 0. » Crop United States Exports 8JP 'Si .3 Consumption !1U Years Bales Bales Bales Cents 1832-33 1,070,438 194,412 867,000 12.32 1833-34 1,205,394 196,413 1,028,000 12.90 1834-35 1,254,328 216,888 1,023,500 17.45 1835-36 1,360,725 236,733 1,116,000 16.50 1836-37 1,423,930 222,540 1,169,000 13.25 1837-38 1,801,497 246,063 1,575,000 10.14 1838-39 1,360,532 276,018 1,074,000 13.36 1839-40 2,177,835 295,193 1,876,000 8.92 1840-41 1,634,954 267,850 1,313,500 9.50 1841-42 1,683,574 267,850 1,465,500 7.85 1842-43 2,378,875 325,129 2,010,000 7.25 1843-44 2,030,409 346,750 1,629,500 7.73 1844-45 2,394,503 389,000 2,083,700 5.63 1845-46 2,100,537 422,600 1,666,700 7.87 1846-47 1,778,651 428,000 1,241,200 11.21 1847-48 2,439,786 616,044 1,858,000 8.03 1848-49 2,866,938 642,485 2,228,000 7.55 1849-50 2,233,718 613,498 1,590,200 12.34 1850-51 2,454,442 485,614 1,988,710 12.14 1851-52 3,126,310 689,603 2,443,646 9.50 1852-53 3,416,214 803,725 2,528,400 11.02 1853-54 3,074,979 737,236 2,319,148 10.97 1854-55 2,982,634 706,417 2,244,209 10.39 1855-56 3,665,557 777,739 2,954,606 10.30 1856-57 3,093,737 819,936 2,252,657 13.51 1857-58 3,257,339 595,562 2,590,455 12.23 1858-59 4,018,914 927,651 3,021,403 12.08 1859-60 4,861,292 978,043 3,774,173 11. 1860-61 3,849,469 843,740 3,127,568 13.01 1861-62 ) f 31.29 1862-63 I War period J 67.21 1863-64 f ] 101.50 1864-65 J L 83.38 1865-66 2,269,316 666,100 1,554,664 43.20 1866-67 2,097,254 770,030 1,557,054 31.59 1887-68 2,519,554 906,636 1,655,816 24.85 1868-69 2,366,467 926,374 1,465,880 29.01 1869-70 3,122,551 865,160 2,206,480 23.98 1870-71 4,352,317 1,110,196 3,169,009 16.95 1871-72 2,974,351 1,237,330 1,957,314 20.48 COTTON 25 CROP, EXPORTS AND PRICES FOR SEVENTY YEARS (Continued) Crop United States W- Consumption Exports 3fc Year Bales Bales Bales Cents 1872-73 3,930,508 ,201,127 2,679,986 18.15 1873-74 4,170,388 ,305,943 2,840,981 17. 1874-75 3,832,991 ,193,005 2,684,708 15. 1875-76 4,632,313 ,351,870 3,234,244 13. 1876-77 4,474,069 ,428,013 3,030,835 11.73 1877-78 4,773,865 ,489,022 3,360,254 11.28 1878-79 5,074,155 ,558,329 3,481,004 10.83 1879-80 5,761,252 1,789,978 3,885,003 12.02 1880-81 6,605,750 1,938,937 4,589,346 11.34 1881-82 5,456,048 1,964,535 3,582,622 12.16 1882-83 6,949,756 2,073,096 4,766,597 10.63 1883-84 5,713,200 1,876,683 3,916,581 10.64 1884-85 5,706,165 1,753,125 3,947,972 10.54 1885-86 6,575,691 2,162,544 4,336,203 9.44 1886-87 6,505,087 2,111,532 4,445,302 10.25 1887-88 7,046,833 2,257,247 4,627,502 10.27 1888-89 6,938,290 2,314,091 4,854,573 10.71 1889-90 7,311,322 2,390,959 4,996,543 11.53 1890-91 8,652,597 2,632,023 5,783,101 9.03 1891-92 9,035,379 2,876,846 5,868,545 7.64 1892-93 6,700,365 2,431,134 4,410,524 8.24 1893-94 7,549,817 2,319,688 5,360,318 7.67 1894-95 9,901,251 2,946,677 6,926,025 6.50 1895-96 7,157,346 2,504,972 4,751,384 8.16 1896-97 8,757,964 2,847,351 6,088,521 7.72 1897-98 11,199,994 3,443,581 7,674,065 6.22 1898-99 11,274,840 3,589,494 7,452,116 6. - 1899-00 9,436,416 3,665,412 6,055,874 8.69 1900-01 10,383,422 3,588,501 6,639,931 8.96 1901-02 10,680,680 3,988,501 6,715,793 8.75 1902-03 10,727,559 4,161,374 6,766,378 10.27 1903-04 10,011,374 3,946,219 6,109,755 12.42 1904-05 13,565,885 4,445,650 8,767,180 9.11 26 COTTON THE LIMITS OF PROFITABLE COTTON PRODUCTION IN THE SOUTH Stretch a line from Norfolk to Memphis, Lit- tle Rock and Dallas, and you have the Cotton Belt fairly outlined — though cotton has been grown to some extent north of this line. It was first culti- vated in Virginia. One hundred and twenty years ago it was found on farms in parts of Delaware. "At the time of the Revolution the home-grown cot- ton was sufficiently abundant in Pennsylvania to supply the domestic needs of the State." Three Maryland counties grew the crop largely up to eighty years ago. In Civil War times Nevada and Illinois also figured in cotton production. Of late years, however, the production of cotton in all States beyond the borders of the old Southern Confederacy has steadily diminished. Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia each showed a declining yield for the last census decade as com- pared with the preceding decade. For fifty years now the median point of pro- duction has been within a radius of about 75 miles from Jackson, Mississippi, — in the earlier period northeast of Jackson, but in the last twenty years carried northwest by the increase of the Texas crop and the opening up of new lands in Oklahoma and Indian Territory. The cotton section west of the Mississippi grew 34 per cent, of the crop in 1879, 38 per cent, in 1889, and 43 per cent, in 1899. The next census will probably show the center of production as having for the first time crossed be- yond the Father of Waters. CHAPTER III. DOES FOREIGN COMPETITION THREATEN THE SOUTH^S SUPREMACY? The figures we have already quoted and the ta- bles of statistics we have given leave so little to be said about the subject of acreage and production in the South that we now proceed directly to the inquiry which is doubtless uppermost in the minds of most of our readers: Is the South likely to maintain its present su- premacy as the world's chief source of raw cotton? For it is really the South against the field, and all the countries that now make cotton on a small scale are interesting in this respect only as we re- gard them as a combination which might eventually rob America of its prestige. ENGLAND'S EFFORTS TO BECOME INDEPENDENT OF SLAVE-MADE COTTON It is not a new subject. Before us now is a bulky, time-worn volume, bearing on its title page the legend, "Cotton is King: and Pro-Slavery Argu- ments," and one of the weighty problems which engrossed the attention of its compilers was the effort England was making to free herself from dependence on slave-made cotton. I have also dis- (27) 28 COTTON covered in this musty volume some extracts from the London Economist of 1859 which — except for their direct references to slavery, — might well have appeared yesterday. The Economist Editor com- ments on the fact that Brazil, Egypt and the West Indies all grow cotton and might grow more, "but as an immediate and practical question of supply, it is confined to America and British India." To India, however, he looks very hopefully. The situation, he says, "invests the subject of Indian cotton growing with enormous interest. In some important respects the conditions of supply from India differ very much from those which attach to and determine the sup- ply from America. In India there is no limit to the quantity of labor. There may be said to be little or none to the quantity of land. The obstacle is of another kind ; it lies almost exclusively in lack of cheap transit." Therefore he finds new hopes in the "railways which are being constructed . . . . . to bring in the abundant labor of millions of our fellow subjects in India to cheapen and in- crease the supply of cotton." No English consul or cotton manufacturer in our own time has had a severer attack of Mulberry Sellers optimism than did this Economist writer of fifty years ago. "HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL " Writing later in 1859, the Editor of the Econo- mist lauded in the highest terms the continued efforts to make England independent of Southern cotton. "We cannot well conceive of stronger con- siderations than those which are moving English- men to action in this particular," he says; ,and this time he also lays stress on the opportunities in COTTON 29 Africa. Missionaries from various sections also believed that West Africa and the Niger countries would relieve the situation; and Lord Palmerston shared the enthusiastic faith that Great Britain would "find on the West Coast of Africa a most valuable supply of cotton cotton districts more extensive than those of India." If Alexander Pope were alive to-day he could ask no stronger confirmation of his famous dictum that "hope springs eternal in the human breast" than the persistence with which English manu- facturers still hug the delusion that Africa and India will enable them — as their fathers and grand- fathers fifty years ago hoped it would enable them — to get a large part of their raw cotton from Old World districts. WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE CRUCIAL TEST CAME We all remember how on one occasion Uncle Remus was telling the Little Boy of one of Brer Rabbit's hair-breadth escapes. The pursuer was almost upon Mr. Cottontail and in another moment might have had him in his furious grasp. "And right then Brer Rabbit he clumb a tree," said Uncle Remus. "But rabbits can't climb trees," protested the Little Boy. "Never mind," replied the old darkey, "Brer Rabbit this time was obleeged — jest obleeged — to climb the tree — en' he clumb it." Well, in 1862 the English spinner reached the same inexorable crisis that confronted Brer Rabbit — the time when he knew he was "jest obleeged to climb the tree." 30 COTTON And he didn't climb it. SOME STATE'S EVIDENCE Let the British edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica tell the story. Let us hear this piece of State's evidence as to the crisis which came when war so nearly stopped cotton production in the South: "This great source of supply, when apparently most abundant and secure, was shortly afterwards suddenly cut off, and thousands were for a time de- prived of employment and the means of subsistence. In this period of destitution the cotton-growing resources of every part of the globe were tested to the utmost; and in the Exhibition of 1862 the rep- resentatives of every country from which supplies might be expected met to concert measures for ob- taining all that was wanted without the aid of America. The colonies and dependencies of Great Britain, including India, seemed well able to grow all the cotton that could be required, whilst num- erous other countries were ready to afford their co- operation. A powerful stimulus was thus given to the growth of cotton in all directions; a degree of activity and enterprise never witnessed before was seen in India, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Africa, the West Indies, Queensland, New South Wales, Peru, Brazil, and in short wherever cotton could be produced; and there seemed no room to doubt that in a short time there would be abundant supplies independently of America. But ten years afterwards, in the Exhibition of 1872, which was specially devoted to cotton, a few only of the thirty- five countries which had sent their samples in 1862 again appeared, and these for the most part only to COTTON 31 bear witness to disappointment and failure. Amer- ica had re-entered the field of competition, and was rapidly gaining ground so as to be able to bid de- fiance to the world." AFRICAN AND INDIAN EXPERIMENTS NOT A SUCCESS An even more vivid picture of the inducements to foreign competition which England held out during the Civil War period is furnished by the 1869 report of the Cotton Commissioner of India. So immense were the profits that the Indian cotton farmers received, he says, that they committed all sorts of absurdities: "Silver plowshares and tires of solid silver for cartwheels made their appear- ance here and there; fancy prices were paid for bullocks of a favorite color or possessing some peculiarities of tail, and enormous sums were squandered on marriage ceremonies." And yet in spite of the enormous subsidies (virtually) which were paid, and the energy with which the experi- ment was prosecuted, it was found impossible even with artificial inflation to carry the Indian crop beyond 3,000,000 bales. As to Africa, the experiments there have never been at any time anything but inglorious failures; and it is said that the cotton made in the Niger territory has cost 50 cents a pound. A West Afri- can correspondent of the London Times says that the much vaunted "colonies of Lagos, Southern Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and Gambia, under the most favorable circumstances .... will not be capable of producing more than 350,- 000 bales, and these figures will not be attained for many years, if ever." 32 COTTON WORLD'S DEMAND WILL GROW FASTER THAN FOREIGN PRODUCTION It is not likely, of course, that all these attempts to grow cotton outside the South will fail utterly; but what does seem sure is that the world's demand for cotton will grow much faster than the foreign supply, and that therefore our country will be called on in the future, as heretofore, for a constantly in- creasing crop. And in support of this opinion the writer will quote just three opinions, and then pass on to other subjects. First, our own National Department of Agricul- ture in its Crop Reporter for December, 1905, makes this conservative statement of fact: "The organized efforts of powerful associations of cotton manufacturers in Great Britain, Germany, and France to establish and stimulate cotton production in the colonies of these countries, which began early in 1903 with a large capital subscribed for promo- tion, have so far resulted in no perceptible addition to the world's cotton crop, and there are no present indications of a competition of new fields of produc- tion which will materially affect the foreign market for the upland cotton of this country for many years." LOWER SOUTH AMERICA ALONE CAN COMPETE WITH THE SOUTH Even more interesting is the opinion of the late Edward Atkinson, as given in an article in the Manufacturers' Record in 1903. During the Civil War Mr. Atkinson imported cotton from India, Egypt, China, West Africa, Peru and Brazil, and his conclusion is that nearly all the foreign cotton COTTON 33 is as unsatisfactory in quality as it is deficient in quantity. None of the countries mentioned, he says, have a congenial climate such as ours. The Indian fiber is "short, rough and unsuited to any but the coarsest fabrics;" the Chinese fiber he found "only about a quarter of an inch long;" the cotton from West Africa "wholly unfit for use as a sub- stitute for America;" and he did not think Peru or Brazil could compete with the South. Summing up, Mr. Atkinson declared that while he should like to believe otherwise, he was forced to the con- clusion that the South would have a virtual monopo- ly for fifty years. "There is but one section of the earth's surface, where, in my judgment, there can be competition with our Cotton States in growing cotton of equal quality, and that is on the high pampas of the Paraguay and Parana Rivers, suf- ficiently elevated to be free from tropical condi- tions, endowed with a soil of wonderful fertility and capable of unlimited crops of cotton and wheat Therefore our Cotton States have an unwholesome but practical monopoly of the cotton of commerce. They are not, therefore, under the wholesome stimulus of prospective want, and there- fore their method as a rule, subject to conspicuous exceptions, in dealing with their land, their cotton and their cotton bale, is as bad as it can be, as I have often said when face to face with my friends in the South." ENGLISH AUTHORITIES FINALLY ADMIT THE SOUTH^S SUPREMACY Lastly I come to the most striking testimony of all — direct evidence given by "our friends, the ene- my." It is the report of the Commissioners sent 34 COTTON out by the British Government to investigate the cotton-growing possibilities of East Africa; and with this parting shot we shall drop the question of possible foreign _ competition with the Southern States: "All efforts to raise cotton successfully elsewhere than in the Southern part of the United States have failed. This is the home of the cotton plant, and if it will grow and fruit elsewhere to the extent that the staple have a substantial commercial value, the fact is yet to be demonstrated. It was experi- mented with under different suns during and after the American Civil War, and all the experiments failed. Providence has given the Southern farmer a monopoly of the indispensable cotton crop, and he need not take fright when the price soars and there are heard threats of turning Africa, Egypt or other countries into cotton fields and making them furnish the world's supply," ll, CHAPTER IV. THE MEN WHO MAKE COTTON: WHITES AND BLACKS; PLANTERS AND TENANTS Unique in many other features already men- tioned, cotton is also unique among American staples in that it is the favorite crop of the negro farmer and that in its production a larger number of ten- ants are employed than in any other crop. WHY THE NUMBER OF TENANTS INCREASED IN 1890- 1900 Of the farms in the ten Cotton States in 1900 48.3 per cent, were operated by owners, 20.3 per cent, by cash tenants, and 31.4 by share tenants — showing a decrease for the decade of 15 per cent, in proportion operated by owners, a gain of 12 per cent, in the proportion worked by share tenants, and a gain of 33.1-3 per cent, in percentage operated by cash tenants. Of share tenants there are several classes. Some rent land only, paying therefor one-fourth of the farm product; others are fur- nished land, stock, tools, and one-half fertilizer, and receive one-half the crop, while still others are content to furnish labor only for one-third the yield. The relative decrease in number of farms op- erated by owners during the last census decade must be attributed to the emigration of farm owners to (35) 36 COTTON towns, as a result of the depression in cotton prices. Sir Guilford Molesworth estimates that between 1872 and 1894 prices of general commodities fell 50 per cent., while cotton prices declined 70 per cent. With the turn in the tide in prices, one now finds abundant evidence of a similar turn in the tide of migration. NEGRO'S IMPORTANCE IN COTTON PRODUCTION PROB- ABLY OVERESTIMATED As to the negro in cotton production there are probably conflicting impressions and delusions. "A regular 'cottontjot ' " as he has been called, the negro, the mule, and the cotton patch are inseparably linked together in the public mind. In 1899 little more than half of the Southern white farmers grew cotton, while 84 per cent, of the negroes were faith- ful to their favorite staple. And yet it is more than likely that the average reader has overestimated the negro's importance as a factor in cotton-growing. It is so picturesque to have the black negro in the white cotton field that in about ninety- nine per cent, of our book, magazine, and tourist pictures it is the son of Ham and not the white man who is laboring with the fleecy staple. As a result of all this, the average Northern reader would probably be surprised to learn of hundreds of thousands of small white farmers with their fam- ilies who make cotton from planting to picking al- most or entirely without negro labor. On many farms a negro is never employed; on many others, negroes are called in only for a few days' work in the height of the busy season. COTTON 37 Of the 1,418,000 cotton farms reported in 1900, 849,000 were operated by whites. White farmers cultivated 14,616,000 acres, and negro farmers, 9,650,000 acres. (Of course, though, much negro labor was hired to assist in cultivating the white farms.) THE SHIFTLESS NEGRO TENANT FAEMEE Of the negro farmers more than four-fifths are tenants — or about 500,000 of the nearly 600,000 negro farmers. "Clearly the central feature of the Southern farm life of the negro race," says Prof. W.E. DuBois, "is the tenant class— this half mil- lion black men who hire farms on various terms, and a large proportion of whom stand about midway be- tween slavery and ownership." One hardly knows whether to say that the negro's indifference, his contentment with this lot, makes the situation more or less tragical. "Take ye no thought for the morrow — what ye shall eat, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on," is one Bible commandment which the negro literally obeys. And his other favorite commandment is like unto it : "Multiply and replenish the earth" — taking equally little heed for the morrow of the niggerkins them- selves, unless Topsy-like, they "just grow." As an old negro whom the writer used to know would say, "If I've got a peck of corn meal in the bar'l, I ain't got nothin' to worry about." "The one-room cabin" says Prof. Du Bois, "is still the typical farm home of the negro," and as for his food and disposition: "Oh, I gits my stren'th from white side meat, I sops all de sorghum a nigger kin eat, I chaws wheat bread on Saddy night En' I ain't no han' to run f ' urn a fight." 38 COTTON Let us look for a minute at our typical negro tenant. He moves in December to a new farm, we will say — f or he has a roving instinct that prevents his remaining long at any place. He probably rents horse, land and tools from the farm owner, taking half the crop for his labor, and the farmer stands his security for supplies at the nearest store. Or he may rent land only, paying one-fourth the crop for the land, and mortgage his unplanted crop to the merchant for advance supplies. At any rate, the negro's recklessness, coupled with the exorbitant "time prices" charged, leads him perhaps to buy more than his crop pays for — so that the mer- chant's reckoning when the negro brings in his three or four bales of cotton in the fall, has been pretty accurately set forth in the popular couplet: " Naught's a naught, figger's a figger, All for the white man, and none for the nigger." Heretofore it has been true in most cases per- haps that the negro actually ended the year owing the merchant a balance on the year's supplies — the merchant not allowing the balance, however, to be- come more than just large enough to insure the negro's becoming his bondservant for another year. If, however, the negro finds himself burdened with an unexpected cash surplus after paying his debts, he probably relieves the burden aforesaid by buying an organ (which no member of his family can play) or a calendar clock (the dates of which he can barely read) or a magnificent range (on which his wife will experiment with side meat and corn bread until she becomes disgusted and goes back to the family fire-place) . HOW THE NEGRO TENANTS LIVE. The pictures show typical homes of negro croppers and renters of the poorer NEGRO PICKERS AT WORK AND AT HOME. (A) Favorite method of weighing the day's harvest, the basket supported by a fence rail borne on the shoulders of two men. (,B) a negro cabin. COTTON 39 A DIFFERENT TYPE OF NEGRO FARMER Such is our typical negro — "light-hearted, good- natured and aisily lynched," as Mr. Dooley says — typical, but not the only type. A by no means in- considerable number of negroes are acquiring property, building better houses, and adopting im- proved methods of farming. Many negroes once tenants have bought portions of the farms where they formerly worked. For example, take Deal Jackson, a Georgia negro cotton grower, who every year for seven years past has beaten every one of the 110,906 white farmers of his State in getting the first bale to market. Less than twenty years ago Deal was a tenant. He borrowed $1,000 to buy a run-down farm, mortgaging the place as security. Then like that proverbially modest man who wanted each year to buy just the land "j'inin' his," so Deal continued to buy adjoining tracts until he has 2,000 acres of fertile land, operating, with his tenants, forty-five plows. WHEN LOW PRICES CRUSHED BOTH WHITES AND BLACKS Nor should we forget that it is not the negro alone who has struggled year after year, Sisyphus- like, with the burden of debt. Thousands of white tenants, and of white farm owners as well, have had the same experience. In fact, unless the farmer carried some surplus savings into that long period of low prices from 1891 to 1901, such an experience was almost unavoidable. With any reasonably high standard of living, cotton was then below the cost of production. No wonder farm owners moved 40 COTTON to towns and mortgages became almost as common as they were in the West in the days of low-priced corn. Ten-cent cotton then seemed an iridescent dream, and men talked of it as the feature of some Golden Age gone never to return. CHANGES RESULTING FROM HIGH-PRICED COTTON Of course, with the coming of higher prices for cotton, important changes are taking place. The mortgage and the crop lien, with all except the hopelessly shiftless class, are disappearing like snow before a summer sun — unless we except the mort- gage given by the aspiring tenant in his ambition to become a land-owner himself. As to the future/ one must not predict too lightly, for it is easy to see that the present high price of cotton will make itself felt not in one direction only, but in counter currents. As one result, more tenants wish to buy lands for themselves; as another result, land is increasing in value so that it requires greater savings to buy it. On the whole, however, it is now relatively easier to become one's own landlord, and with high prices the tenant class is likely to decrease. As one result, too, more people are attracted by the old plantation system; as another result, labor- ers find it so profitable to work for themselves that labor is much more expensive than it used to be. But as the negro works better in groups, the large plantation has at least this advantage in its struggle to reassert itself. With high prices then, the one sure thing — whether the proportion of tenants increase or de- crease, whether the plantation system decline or COTTON 41 flourish — is that a larger proportion of white people will engage in cotton production. If laBor can be had few town occupations are more profitable. And as for the man who has his own labor, who must have his own children at work, how much better for health, safety and comfort, as well as profit, to have them on the cotton farm instead of in the cotton factory ! Already many cotton mills are beginning to suf- fer for labor because the tide is turning back to the farms. ||| CHAPTER V. A 25,000,000 BALE CROP: WILL THE SOUTH BE READY WHEN THE WORLD DEMANDS IT? Thirty years ago the South grew only 4,000,000 bales of cotton; twenty years ago 6,000,000 bales; ten years ago, 8,000,000 bales; the last three crops have averaged more than 11,000,000. And the end is not yet. Cotton is not only sup- planting other fabrics (we have seen how rapidly wool production is decreasing) , but the demand for the great Southern staple is increasing as a result of the constant raising of our standards of living and of comfort, and as a result of the advance of civilization among peoples heretofore barbarous. The time will soon have passed when "the lady in middle Africa may cavalierly inform the agent of the American cotton mill that clothes are of doubt- ful propriety amongst the aristocracy of the Con- go Valley anyhow." THE WORLD WILL DEMAND 42,000,000 BALES "It is estimated," says the United States Depart- ment of Agriculture, " that of the world's popula- tion of 1,500,000,000, about 500,000,000 regularly wear clothes, about 750,000,000 are partially • (42) COTTON 43 clothed, and 250,000,000 habitually go . almost naked, and that to clothe the entire population of the world would require 42,000,000 bales of 500 pounds each. It therefore seems more than likely that the cotton industry will go on expanding until the whole of the inhabited earth is clothed with the products of its looms." And it is the opinion of the authors that the South will increase her production just as fast as the world increases her demands. We have yet a shamefully low average yield; we are depending yet on fear- fully mistreated soils ; we are yet planting miserably selected seed ; and we have very inefficient tools and machinery. Necessity, that mother of invention, will help us reform these abuses — just as necessity brought about the new inventions in cotton spin- ning, and just as necessity brought about Whitney's cotton gin. When it becomes necessary for her to furnish the world 25,000,000 bales of cotton, the South will furnish it. OF SOUTHERN LANDS ONLY ONE ACRE IN SEVEN- TEEN NOW IN COTTON Even if we were not going to double the yield (and unless the boll weevil interferes, men now liv- ing may see that result) , we have enough available idle land to make 30,000,000 bales with the present low average yield per acre. Of the twelve Cotton States only one acre in seventeen is now planted to the fleecy staple, and only one acre in eleven of the cotton-producing counties. Only two-fifths of the farm lands of the South are yet improved for any sort of crop. t The great trouble is that we have so long allowed the bulk of our cotton lands to be butchered by 44 COTTON negro slaves and negro tenants that we do not yet appreciate the marvelous possibilities of scientific cotton farming. Just take the bald statement of Dr. H. J. Webber: "The average yield of cotton in the United States is only about 190 pounds of lint per acre, while on many large tracts carefully cultivated a yield of 500 to 800 pounds per acre is frequently obtained." Here in itself is material for a book of sermons. SEED SELECTION MAY INCREASE YIELD 30 TO 50 PER CENT. For one thing, the seed for the cotton crop are probably selected with less care than are seed for any other farm crop that men grow. Your cotton farmer will carefully select the largest and best- formed ears for his seed corn; he will pay high prices for improved seed or oats; even his water- melon seed are selected from the most luscious and reddest-meated specimens of last summer. But when it comes to seed for his cotton crop he is strangely careless. The average farmer gets his seed haphazard from the general supply at the gin — good, bad, indifferent; early, late, medium; tall, bushy, and ordinary, varieties all mixed. With such conditions there is indeed abundant reason for believing that the average cotton yield per acre could be increased one-fourth by only five years' wise selection of seed. We know a farmer now who by selecting seed from the most thrifty stalks and having the seed ginned separately, in two years so improved tl^e crop from the selected seed that the improvement was easily noted and became a matter of comment by persons passing on COTTON 45 the road. We know another farmer who by a few years' seed selection has increased the yield of cot- ton thus improved from 400 to 600 pounds while seed selected in the old way grown on similar land and under similar conditions still makes its bare 400 pounds an acre. Fifty per cent, increase from four years' selection of seed ! Of course, where a special type of cotton has been nurtured and improved through a long period of years' seed selection has increased the yield of cot- results can be obtained than with ordinary farm- bred seed ; and when our farmers come to a proper appreciation of this fact, a long step toward the doubled yield will have been made by this one re- form. Thus one of our State Departments of Agriculture, speaking of a five-year test of cotton varieties ( with practically the same conditions of soil, fertilization and cultivation) , declares that in 1900, in a test of eight varieties the difference between the variety yielding the largest amount of seed cot- ton per acre, and the one the smallest, was 565 pounds; in 1901 and 1902 in tests of seven varieties each, the differences were 520 and 790 pounds re- spectively; in 1903, 662 1-2 pounds when nine varieties were incorporated; and 725 2-5 pounds difference in 1904 in a test of twenty-one varieties. In other words, one man uses intelligence in seed selection; another man does not; both work equally hard; both have land of equal value; both expend the same amount for fertilizers — but the scientific cotton farmer gets from 500 to 700 pounds more per acre than the thoughtless clodhopper. So much for what we may accomplish by seed selection alone. 46 COTTON CORN SEVEN TIMES, WHEAT TWICE, AS EXHAUSTIVE AS COTTON But it is not alone in our reckless disregard of the ancient laws of breeding that we have succeeded in bringing down the yield of cotton far below what it should be; like a Prodigal Son, wasting his sub- stance in riotous living, we have also been guilty of inexcusable folly in dealing with Nature's greatest gift to the farmer — the soil itself. 'Land-starved for ages, our forefathers came from Europe to our Southern States and reveled in mad intoxication in the seemingly unlimited areas of virgin soils they found. Before the Civil War it was customary to clear up land, grow a few crops of cotton on it, then "turn it out" to broomsage and gullies, and clear up more new lands for the cotton crop. The old fields of the South probably cover an area as large as five of the New England States. So it was not mere poetic sentiment, but the deep recognition of a damning economic sin that moved Sidney Lanier to say : ' ' Upon that generous rounding side With gullies scarified When keen Neglect his lash hath plied Yon old deserted Georgian hill Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest And seamy breast, By restless-hearted children left to lie Untended there beneath the heedless sky, As barbarous folk expose their old to die." Really, as we shall see further on in this book, there is less reason for the abandoned field in cotton growing than in any other kind of farming. An average crop of wheat requires twice as much plant food as an average crop of cotton, and an average crop of corn nearly seven times as much. COTTON 47 Or to put the matter in even more striking form, it appears that if through feeding and manuring, the wheat straw, corn stover and cotton seed of these three crops respectively are each returned to the soil, wheat requires nineteen times as much of the great fertilizing elements as cotton, and corn thirty times as much. Sooner or later the Southern farmer will learn to apply this doctrine ; the farm paper, the agricultural text-book in the public school, the agricultural col- lege, the Farmers' Institute workers, all are ham- mering away at the idea. And then when the cotton farmer gets this double- jointed idea: first, that he has the finest stock food in the world; second, that with this by-product properly utilized he has the crop that is of all crops the kindest to the soil — and a practical monopoly of this crop, — why, then, we shall have a new era in Southern agriculture; and as Dr. B. T. Galloway says, "a system of land- robbing will give way to a system of land -building." THE MECHANICAL COTTON-PICKER But, some one reminds us, in this day of labor- saving machinery cotton is still the one crop most fully dependent on hand labor. It is said that within fifty years the time of human labor required to produce a bushel of corn has decreased from four hours to thirty-four minutes, and for a bushel of wheat from three hours and ten minutes to ten min- utes, while it is doubtful if the time of human labor required to produce a pound of cotton has been di- minished even one-third. What then — when the world has begun to demand 25,000,000 bales of the South, even though we have so improved our seed 48 COTTON and so built up our lands as to find no difficulty here, shall we not nevertheless be hopelessly balked by lack of labor for chopping and picking the crop? This problem, in our opinion, is another one that is likely to solve itself when inexorable circumstance demands that it do so. As for hoeing the cotton, that problem is already solved. Within two miles of where this book is written, some of the finest cotton in the county was grown last year entirely without hand-chopping — simply by the right use of the peg-tooth smoothing harrow and the cultivator. The cotton was thinned and kept free from grass entirely by these tools. And instead of the average yield of 200 pounds of lint per acre, this land made 700 pounds of lint per acre! A much more serious problem is the mechanical cotton-picker. There are many lions in the path. Cotton does not open all at once, but irregularly through a period of several weeks. Cotton does not have the uniformity of corn or wheat in size or position, but is irregularly placed in the rows, its limbs grow all over it, and the plants vary hope- lessly in size; the limbs furthermore are easily broken. Finally, the lint should be free from dirt and trash, and many have thought that only the human hand could select the lint from the open bolls without adding a ruinously large quantity of dead leaves and dirt. Clearly, therefore, the making of a mechanical picker is a hard task, and yet so fertile is the human imagination and so enormous are the rewards await- ing the man who succeeds in making an effective picker — the wealth of Croesus may be his — that we expect it to come, and to come not very many COTTON 49 years hence. Writing of this matter in a farm paper early in 1904, we said: "The present labor crisis in the Cotton Belt is certain to bring the mat- ter to the attention of inventors. We have long thought of the cotton picker as an impossi- bility, because the bolls are irregularly placed, ripen irregularly, and must not be mixed with limbs and leaves in picking. But the suggestion now made puts the matter in a new light. Instead of a harvesting machine on a big scale such as we have for grain, a small machine carefully guided and watched over by an operator, would be put to the task of taking the cotton from the open bolls. It does not look as if this should be wholly impos- sible. And as there are millions in it for the man who succeeds at it, it is likely to be done if it can be done." THE LOWRY COTTON PICKER DESCRIBED Within the last few months the South has seen this "small machine carefully guided and watched over by an operator, put to the task of taking the cotton from the open bolls." It is the Lowry Picker, and its mode of operation has been fully described as follows; the photographs given herewith making the matter still plainer: "The machine is not entirely automatic, as the arms that carry the little wheels which gather in the fleecy staple must be directed by human hands to the open bolls. The arms carry a chain with hooked teeth, adjusted like the chains of a bicycle. When the machine is in operation this chain re- volves rapidly and the curved hooks gather up the staple the instant it touches the open boll, and 50 COTTON carries the cotton upward until it is deflected off into a receptacle, by a revolving brush. The ma- chine carries four operators and a driver, for each of whom a comfortable seat is prepared. There is no necessity for any bending or stooping on the part of the operator, and all he is required to do is to direct the well-balanced and nicely-adjusted arms of the machine. It is claimed by the inventor that when finally perfected each arm should gather up one boll per second, at a very low rate of speed, making 480 bolls per minute for the four opera- tions, or 28,800 per hour. As the bolls early in the season average 60 to 80 in the pound, one machine could pick from 3,600 to 4,800 pounds per day of ten hours. One of these machines with four boys and a driver could do the work of twenty average pickers." Some who have seen the Lowry Picker ask: "And what shall it profit the cotton farmer to have this machine, since even with it the human hand, or what is virtually an extension of the human hand, must be directed to each individual boll?" The advantage lies in the fact that the man who operates the mechanical hand at least saves (or should save) the time required in bending over each new stalk and the time required in drawing his hand back and forth in putting each separate handful into his picking-sack — and this is more than half the time required in picking. Others who think Mr. Lowry has invented a practical device for picking the cotton say that he has hampered its success by putting it in connec- tion with a motive power which is not satisfactory: in other words, he is sacrificing a good invention COTTON 51 of great possibilities by yoking it with a motive- power invention absolutely worthless. Whatever the difficulties, we may be sure that if Mr. Lowry's basic principle is right, it will sooner or later be separated from all entangling alliances and set to the service of a great need. And sup- pose it succeeds simply in doing the work of four men? Or suppose it reduces the cost of picking by just half? Picking now costs $100,000,000 a year — think of saving just $50,000,000 annually to the South! Or to put it differently, "To pick a crop of 11,000,000 bales, at an average of 150 pounds of seed cotton a day per picker, means that for a picking season of three months, consisting of twenty working days each, somewhat over 1,830,- 000 people must be kept at work. Hence the basis for the claim that a picker doing the work of four men would reduce 1,500,000 people to other in- dustries for a fourth of each year." Indeed, there are millions in it! NOTE. — Of course many other pickers besides the Lowry have been brought before the public, but the Lowry is clearly the one that now gives most promise of success. We know an old man who twenty years ago invented a picker and still has faith that his idea will work into a success. An incorporated company, the Dixie Cotton Picker Co., of Chicago, is also at work upon the problem, and we are indebted to them for the pictures of their machine appearing herewith, and for the following description of how it works : 4 'The two large wheels of the machine travel in the furrows between the rows, the plants being gathered into the front of the machine between the two points of the gatherers; and, as the bushes strike the apron, they are gently bent over to the ground so that the picking spindles enter the same while the plants are held between the skirts running parallel with the machine. There is continually entering the bushes during the progress of the machine forward about 60 revolving picking fingers. It is evident, also, that much cotton will be picked even though it be lying upon the ground, because these picking fingers with every vertical thrust downward reach clear to the ground. Each of these picking fingers, while in the plant, makes 22 revolutions and con- tinues revolving about their own axes until they have disappeared into the machine; at which time they cease revolving, and a stripping wheel 52 COTTON cleans the cotton by traversing the full length of each spindle. This stripping wheel is better termed a slotted wheel which revolves rapidly in the opposite direction to that which the spindle or picking fingers are traveling; and after clearing the cotton from the fingers, it is carried up to a point where a set of doffer wheels clears the slotted wheel of its load of cotton, throwing the same into a basket which rides on the rear of the machine. The machine weighs about 1200 pounds, has a raising and lowering device upon it which is essential in getting in and out of the cotton field as well as in turning around." CHAPTER VI. COTTON: WHAT IT MEANS AND WILL MEAN TO THE SOUTHERN STATES Cotton! To every boy born and bred in the Southern States it is a magical word from the time Jie is big enough to roll in its billowy heaps in the "cotton house" or go out into the June cotton field to find the first white bloom for his father, or ride to the gin on the big two-horse wagon-bed which the hands have packed with the snowy fleece new-gathered from the autumn fields. White or black, if his father is not of unusual wealth, he early learns to labor with his own hands in making the crop; and the entire process of cultivation is familiar to him. EVERY SOUTHERN BOY KNOWS COTTON FARMING Long before he leaves off knee pants he learns to plow the cool, fresh earth in early spring; helps haul out the great loads of manure from the barn; brings in the malodorous loads of fertilizer from the nearest village; helps "roll" the planting seed in wet ashes, so that the dry lint may not hold them together in bunches. For planting time is now at hand: the dogwoods are blossoming; the first "tur- tle-dove" has been heard; the fisherman has begun to tell of satisfactory catches in the nearby streams ; "Uncle Isaac" and "Black Bob" dispute wisely as to whether this phase of the moon portends warm (53) 54 COTTON or cool weather, wet or dry. For the cotton seed must be ready to "come up'1 as soon as all danger of frost is passed; and now the rows, ridged and waiting, are opened, and fertilizer and seed dis- tributed. Then the long green line of two-leaved plants, bursting the hard seed-covering they have pushed above ground — and the grass that will not let them be and that we have always with us. Chop- ping then — white and black, old and young, every- body strong enough to handle a hoe. And the plants flourish under the summer sun; now "hoe- hands" report that some plants have "seven leaves," then that limbs have come, and squares — and finally the anxiety as to which farmer in the neighborhood shall report the first bloom, or which one in the county shall send the first one to the editor of the county paper. Weeks, then, of budding and bloom- ing and growing, the thrifty branches bedecked with white blooms that opened this morning and red blooms of yesterday, and becoming heavy now with green and growing bolls. Then on the lowest stalks the bolls begin to open — and who now will gin the first bale? The women in the towns begin to tremble for their negro cooks, and employers of colored men also begin to scent danger. For the coronation of King Cotton is at hand; and all the sons and daughters of Ham must dance attendance. Cotton-picking has an irresistible attraction for all negroes, especially when the picking is done in groups, and though they stay in town even through the watermelon season, cotton picking is likely to lure them back to farms. "The real depth of feeling," as some one has said, "the sheer abandon and the proper stage setting does not come until September has touched the cot- ton fields, and the great hearts of the maturing bolls COTTON 55 burst with joy. That is the supreme moment, and the beautifully blended voices of the negro cotton pickers of the South is a sound, once heard, never to be forgotten. One cannot find any adjective to express the wild untutored beauty of it. It is a chant of inexpressible rhythm, with a note of sad- ness and mingled hope and regret, and one cannot stop without burdening it with that indefinable qualification — and calling it weird . . . these days and nights filled with song and laughter, and the nimble plying of fingers set to music that is per- haps a lone relic of a long-forgotten Congo." IN DIXIE COTTON IS REALLY KING All this the Southern man knows from his youth up; it is his inheritance and a part of his life. For whatever it may or may not be to the rest of the world, in "Dixie" cotton is really king. Here cotton is the life blood of commerce, its condition, the thermometer of trade. Every man talks cotton; every man has an opinion as to the size of the crops; the weather conditions in Texas and throughout the Cotton Belt are subjects of general interest; the Government crop report is read with more in- terest than anything else a newspaper prints. When cotton prices drop, every Southern man feels the blow; when cotton prices advance, every industry throbs with new vigor. We can see then what it means to the South when we say that for the last five crops for which the fig- ures may be given, she has received nearly $1,000,- 000,000 more than for the preceding five crops — twice as much money as is invested in all our Ameri- can cotton mills. For the crop of 1904 and 1905 she received $341,000,000 more than for the crop 56 COTTON of 1899 — which sum if equally divided, would give a surplus of $240 to each of the 1,418,000 farms growing cotton, of $21 each to every one of the 16,000,000 inhabitants of the Cotton States. ASTOUNDING SOUTHERN PROSPERITY Small wonder that Southern railways report heavier increases in earnings than lines in any other section of the country. Small wonder that the assessed valuation of Southern property is now increasing three times as rapidly as in the decade 1890-1900. Small wonder that savings and bank deposits in the Southern States from 1900 to 1905 increased more than 100 per cent, while the increase for the rest of the United States was only 50 per cent. Small wonder that it is no extraordinary affair a Sampson County, North Carolina, farmer re- ported to us when he said last week that a farm he bought four years ago for $57.50 per acre would sell now for $100; another farm bought then for $3,000 was recently sold for $8,000; land values in his county have increased 33 1-3 per cent, within a year, a total increase of a million dollars for this one cotton county. ( We know of two South Caro- lina cotton farms, one of which in three years has increased in selling price from $3,000 to $8,000 and another from $7,000 to $20,000.) Small wonder that Dr. Walter H. Page declares in the World's Work that we "are in sight of the time when the cotton grower in the old Slave States will become the most prosperous tiller of the earth." It is, in fact, a new South that we have. The factory, the bank, the church, the school, the news- paper— all are benefited by the increase in prices COTTON BOLLS: FIBERS OTHER THAN COTTON. The bolls are typical (1) Asiatic, (2) Sea Island, (3) American Upland; (B) rep- common bard fibers other than cotton ; (C) soft fibers ; flax, hemp, and jute. el ffl a U g1 COTTON 57 paid for the South's great staple crop. The archi- tect will tell you that he is building better houses than ever before; the furniture dealer will tell you that he is shipping more furniture than ever before ; the manufacturer of implements and machinery will acknowledge that Southern progress astounds him; the schools report record-breaking openings; the newspaper subscription gains threaten to overtake the circulation manager's estimates; and even the preacher joins in with the story that for once his salary is paid promptly and in full, and that a ser- mon on foreign missions is now unprecedentedly effective. IT MEANS THE COMING OF THE NEW SOUTH These things cannot fail to have the most far- reaching influence upon every phase of Southern life. Prosperity will bring more education, more travel, greater contentment, more liberal thought — in fact as Sidney Lanier said nearly thirty years ago: "One has only to remember that whatever crop we reap in the future — whether it be a crop of poems, of paintings, of symphonies, of constitu- tional safeguards, of virtuous behaviors, of religious exaltations — we have got to bring it out of the ground with palpable plows and with plain farmer's forethought, in order to see that a vital revolution in the farming economy of the South, if it is actu- ally occurring, is necessarily carrying with it all fu- ture Southern politics and Southern relations and Southern art, and that therefore such an agricul- tural change is the one substantial fact upon which any really New South can be predicted." CHAPTER VII. THE ORGANIZATION OF COTTON GROWERS AND WHAT IT MAY ACCOMPLISH "The great secret of success," said Lord Beacons- field, "is to be ready when your opportunity comes." One might go far and not find a better illustra- tion of the truth of Disraeli's assertion than is af- forded by the career of Hon. Harvie Jordan, President of the Southern Cotton Association. His opportunity came in December, 1904, when the Government ginners' report, indicating a crop of 12,000,000 bales, startled the country — electrified the bears, and hopelessly dazed the bulls. Cotton prices went toppling, dropping two cents a pound almost immediately. WHEN HARVIE JORDAN'S OPPORTUNITY CAME For several years Jordan had been fitting himself for a time like this. At the head of the nominal Cotton Growers' Protection Association which he had organized and which his personality had largely kept together, his voice had been as that of one cry- ing in the wilderness; and always, Raven-like, his song had borne one burden — the need of a farmers' organization for the purposes of self protection. When the crash came, and turned everything in the Southern States topsy-turvy, serene Harvie (58) COTTON 59 Jordan sounded the same bugle-note which South- ern farmers had hitherto refused to heed. Now they heard him. A call was issued for a great mass meeting in New Orleans January 24-29, 1905. One of the most pathetic pictures in history is that of the faithful remnant of the old French nobility crowding around poor King Louis when his star had almost set, thrilled again by a deep loyalty to the ancient throne then tottering, and passionately swearing allegiance once more to their hapless king, while the touching strains of "Richard, My Richard, All the World is Leaving Thee!" floated through the ill-fated Parisian palace. It was with some such earnest loyalty, but with confidence the exact opposite of the French despair, that the followers of King Cotton met in New Or- leans that January day. What they said and did it is not our purpose to record here in detail. They did resolve that the South should reduce her acreage 20 per cent, as compared with the previous year, and they organized the Southern Cotton Associa- tion to carry this resolution into effect. With a manifest overproduction, with cotton selling at the time for six or seven cents, and with five-cent prices confidently predicted by the bear leaders of the New York Cotton Exchange, it took considerable courage for the New Orleans Cotton Convention to declare that the remainder of the 1904 crop should be held for ten cents. Such a resolution, however, was almost unani- mously adopted. And within six months the ten cent figure was reached — largely as a result of the success of the movement for reducing the cotton acreage. 60 COTTON HOW ORGANIZATION HELPED ACREAGE REDUCTION It is easy to say, of course, that cotton prices hav- ing become unsatisfactory, the cotton acreage would have been reduced without the aid of the Cotton As- sociation ; but it would certainly not have been re- duced to such an extent. For if the farmer in the Carolinas had felt that the farmer in Texas was re- ducing his acreage on account of low prices, the Carolina farmer would have thought it a good time to increase his own crop — and vice versa. For "that air same Jones" who figures in Sidney Lanier's poem is but the type of thousands and thousands of cotton growers; and we all recall how he read the arguments for reducing cotton acreage and diversi- fying crops — And presently says he: " Hit's true; That Aisley's head is level. Thar's one thing farmers all must do, To keep themselves from goin' tew Bankruptcy and the devil ! *' More corn ! more corn ! must plant less ground, And mustn't eat what's boughten 1 Next year they'll do it : reasoning sound : (And cotton '11 fetch 'bout a dollar a pound,) Tharfore, I'll plant all cotton ! " With Texas and Carolina alike pledged to a 25 per cent, reduction, however, and with each section feeling in honor bound not to take treacherous ad- vantage of its neighbor's fidelity, the cotton farmers of the South were moved by a common purpose, worked together earnestly to a common end — and succeeded. When we attended the meeting of the Southern Cotton Association in Asheville in the fall of 1905, not ten cents, but eleven cents, was fixed as the price of the crop then maturing. COTTON 61 DEMORALIZING CHANGES IN PEICES If it had no other object the organization of the cotton farmers would find ample justification in the opportunity it affords for co-operation in keep- ing the cotton acreage limited to the apparent de- mands of commerce. Very large and very small crops are alike demor- alizing to every cotton interest. These lead to fluctuations in value which make the manufacturer's hair turn gray as he tries to fix a fair price for his product, and which make the cotton farmer the prey of speculators and the sport of chance. Take the difference between seventeen-cent prices in May, 1904, and seven-cent prices in Janu- ary, 1905, eight months later, meaning on a 10,- 000,000 bale crop the difference between $350,- 000,000 and $850,000,000. The remedy for all this lies in a more systematic plan of marketing — the entire cotton crop must not be rushed pell-mell upon the market in the ninety days of the picking and ginning season. Almost invariably prices the following spring are very much better than during the fall; and this is natural, — in fact, inevitable. BUYERS MAKE FALL PURCHASES ONLY WITH ODDS IN THEIR FAVOR If he must buy during the picking season before the size of the crop becomes known, the spinner buys on the assumption that the larger estimates of yield are correct — and he must then allow himself a full margin of safety, else it were better to keep his money employed in something else and buy later with less risk and with less outlay. 62 COTTON In a word, it would be bad business, an unsound economic policy, for buyers to take cotton while the size of the crop is uncertain except upon the basis of the maximum reasonable estimates — which must in any given series of years be materially higher than the correct estimates. Selling in the fall, therefore, the cotton farmer must dispose of his crop with the knowledge that the odds are against him, and that the buyer could not afford to take a supply of millions of bales in excess of his immediate needs, if the odds were not in the buyer's favor. MORE REGULAR MARKETING SURE TO COME Whatever plans may be discussed, the one essen- tial, fundamental thing in marketing is more regu- lar distribution of sales; and even if the warehous- ing system does not become general, cotton growers are likely to break away very rapidly from the old plan of selling cotton as fast as harvested. In the first place, every "lien farmer," every farmer with a mortgaged crop, has had to put his cotton on the market immediately. This class, as has been said, is now rapidly decreasing. Then, too, other farm- ers, hard pressed by adversity in the period of low prices, were unable to hold their product, even if confident of a rising market later on. With better prices, therefore, inevitably comes greater freedom and more gradual marketing. LEAVING COTTON EXPOSED TO THE WEATHER If there is anything more foolish than the policy of rushing the entire crop upon an unwilling mar- ket in the ninety days of the ginning season, it is the way we handle the little cotton we decide not to sell during these ninety days. It has been said — COTTON 63 and with too much truth — that the average farmer takes no more care of his baled cotton than if it were a grindstone. "But," said Mr. J. T. Dargan, of Atlanta, at the New Orleans Cotton Convention, "the farmer is not so big a fool as you think in leav- ing his cotton out in the open on the farm. It is not only safe there under his eye, but, if it rains too much, he can put it under a cheap frame shed in- stead of taking it to town to pay storage charges to the warehouseman, unless he can get more bene- fits than now exist with the average cotton ware- house. What is more important to the cotton grower is, he has long since known that a bale of cotton will lose some ten or fifteen pounds by drying out if stored in a warehouse in comparison to when it is left in the open with a few planks under it to keep it out of the mud. Then, again, bright sunny weather as a rule prevails in the South until about Christmas, by which time most of the cotton grow- er's cotton has been sold to the spot cotton buyers in town. The farmer does not mean to act fraudu- lently by letting his cotton remain in the open to absorb moisture, but as some farmers do it, others are in self-defense compelled to follow suit, and I don't blame him for it at all, for he increases there- by the weight of his cotton and saves storage charges." This assertion of Mr. Dargan's, however, does not affect our contention as to the folly of leaving cotton out in the weather; it only shifts the folly from the farmer's shoulders to those of the buyer who does not take the dampness and damage into his reckoning when buying the staple. More and more, however, buyers are now coming to an appreciation of this fact; and the advantages 64 COTTON of storing cotton in dry places is recognized by the payment of higher prices — both on account of the better fiber and on account of the fact that with the dry cotton the buyer knows he is purchasing cotton, while in the latter case, it is a mixture of cotton with an extra quantity of moisture. A Charlotte paper, we believe, recently estimated the season's loss to its farmers by reason of damaged cotton at $25,000 — and this on a comparatively small market. NOT A LOW PRICE, BUT A STABLE PRICE, NEEDED BY THE MANUFACTURER The organization of cotton farmers, there- fore, means chiefly a better regulated acreage and a better regulated system of marketing; and greater stability in prices is the chief good to be derived from each of these. To have cotton prices ranging from five to fifteen cents in a decade, is manifestly demoralizing to every interest dependent upon the staple; a uniform price of ten cents would be vastly more helpful to all of them. To the cotton manufacturer it matters little whether the prices are high or low ; his profits are perhaps greater when cotton 'is fairly high. But what he does need is a fairly stable price so that he may take an order for manufactured goods months ahead with some idea as to what price he must ask in order to have a fair margin of profit. With the price of raw material ranging from seven to seventeen cents in eight months, as we have seen that it actually did a short time ago, it is of course impossible to make such an advance calculation with any degree of accuracy. THE WORLD'S ANNUAL COTTON CONSUMPTION. Countries. , 1904-05. Bales. 3,588,000 5,148,000 1903-04. Bales. 3,017,000 5,148,000 1902-03. 1901-02. Bales. Bales. 3,185,000 3,253,000 .5,148,000 4,836,000 Continent Total Europe 8,736,000 2,193,937 2,116,318 8,165,000 2,000,954 1,907,548 8,333,000 8,089,000 2,047,801 2,207,175 1,967,300 1,830,157 United States— North United States— South Total, United St East Indies ates . 4,310,255 1,350,000 875,000 130,000 70,000 3,908,502 1,244,992 516,000 88,534 55,500 4,015,101 4,087,382 1,822,608 1,383,790 566,644 726,454 117,614 117,384 59]215 31,524 Japan Canada Mexico Total, India, etc Other countries, etc . Total, world 2,425,000 35,000 1,904,926 82,000 2,066,081 2,259,152 22,407 29,424 15,506,255 298,197 14,010,428 269,481 14,486,589 14,414,908 277,631 277,210 Average, weekly . WORLD'S CONSUMPTION OF COTTON. CONSUMPTION 500-pound Bales OOOs omitted • EUROPE UNITED STATES I *3 c 1 ! Ul 5 5 +j C 83 o§ Continent I A \ South *3 1 1834-85 1885-86 2,746 2,902 2,955 3,073 3,016 3,227 2,604 2,772 2,912 3,087 3,256 3,432 5,350 5,674 5,867 6,110 6,272 6,059 1,286 1,512 1,578 1,624 1,704 1,682 241 310 361 400 444 503 1,527 1,822 1,939 2,024 2.148 2,185 467 504 569 617 697 791 100 120 130 140 150 160 7,444 8,120 8,505 8,891 9.267 9,795 1886-87 1887 88 .... 1888-89 1889 90 Average 6 years. . 1890-91 1891-92 . . 2,986 3,384 3,181 2,866 3,233 3,250 3,276 3,002 3,631 3,619 3,661 3,827 4,030 4,160 5,988 7,015 6,800 6.527 7,060 7,280 7,43*3 1,564 1,810 1,944 1,872 1,593 1,940 1,711 377 557 632 679 671 803 861 1,941 2,367 2,576 2,551 2,264 2,748 2,572 607 924 914 918 959 1,074 1,105 1 99 150 200 192 286 363 M 106 125 195 105 160 129 8,670 10,511 10,565 10,291 10,580 11,543 11,605 1892-93 1893-94 1894-95 1895-96 Average 6 years.. 1896-97. . . . 1897-98 3,198 3,224 3,432 3,519 3,834 3,269 3,253 8,821 4,368 4,628 4.7S4 4,576 4,576 4,88tt 7,019 7,5?2 8,060 8,303 7,910 7,845 8,089 1,S12 1,776 1,808 2,244 2,355 2,150 2,207 700 962 1,154 1,309 1,501 1,577 1,830 2,512 2,738 2,962 3,553 3,856 3,727 4,037 983 1,004 1,141 1,314 1,139 1,060 1,384 215 414 534 703 711 632 726 120 132 191 142 157 152 179 10,849 11.880 12,888 14,015 13,773 13,416 14,415 1898-99 1899-00 1900 01 1901 02 Average 6 years.. 1902-03.... 3,339 3,185 3,017 3,588 4,628 5,148 5,148 5,148 7,967 8,333 8,165 8,736 2,089 2,048 2,001 2,194 1,389 1,967 1,907 2,116 3,478 4,015 3,908 4,310 1,174 1,323 1,245 1350 620 567 516 875 159 199 176 235 13,398 14,437 14,010 15,506 1903-04* 1904-05* COTTON STATISTICS. (Courtesy of Latham, Alexander & Co. ) COTTON 65 CONSERVATISM IN COTTON ASSOCIATION DEMANDS On the whole, the cotton farmers' organization does not seem inclined to be unreasonable in its demands. . Attending its meetings, we have been most impressed by the marked conservatism of its members generally. President Harvie Jordan is on record as saying: "It will be the part of wisdom for all cotton producers to discourage speculative interests that would tend to drive the price of spot cotton above twelve cents a pound, just as it is imperative that no farmer should ever again sell a pound of middling cotton under ten cents per pound. Let us not encourage inflated prices that will hamper the mills, curtail consumption of cotton, and en- courage the growth of this staple in foreign fields. We hold a complete monopoly of the cotton indus- try of the world up to twelve cents a pound, and at that price good profits to the producer can be realized." This quotation may seem to be at a variance with Mr. Jordan's advice late in 1905, urging farmers to hold the remainder of their crop for fifteen cents, but Mr. Jordan declares that he was consistent in that the average price for the entire crop would still have been less than twelve cents, and this on a short crop. REDUCING PRODUCTION OR INCREASING DEMAND ? Another way in which the South's cotton growers may accomplish much good for themselves through organization, is by working together to develop our foreign markets. Civilization demands, as we have seen, that the world consume 42,000,000 bales 66 COTTON of cotton. The prices of wool and silk are prohibi- tive. Only cotton can fill the requirements of cheapness, and the world is yet only half clothed. Says Lieut. Richmond Pearson Hobson: "I have had a great many Chinamen who worked under my directions, and whose work I inspected from day to day, while they were building gun- boats, and if they were doing that work for you, I would judge the wages of such hard-working men to be about forty to fifty cents a day. Now I investigated this matter thoroughly, and as far as I could get any information, I found the real wages of these men to be about five cents a day. Their families are large, and, of course, they can't afford too much for food, clothing or anything else ; and what is the result? The average Chinaman wears about half a suit of clothes. They are cotton, for they don't wear silk over there. It's a mistake to say it is silk, for only the Mandarins can wear silk. Now there were many of these coolies, who would come down from the interior, whom I saw working on these gun-boats, and pretty soon I would see one come down with a whole suit on. That wasn't all. It got a little colder, and I found that same coolie before long would come down with two suits of clothes on, the second pulled over the first. Later, he would come down with three, four, five, six and seven, the last suit (the sixth or the seventh) made of cotton, so that when you saw him coming down the street, he looked like a walking cotton bale." When China wakes up, therefore, we are likely to find an enormously increased demand for our cotton crop in this one country. Properly civi- lized, China alone, says Lieut. Hobson, with its 430,000,000 people, would consume the present COTTON 67 cotton crop of the world. Or to put it more forcefully, we may quote the now famous remark of Mr. Wu Ting Fang to Senator McLaurin of South Carolina: "If my people wore cotton like they do in America, and every Chinaman should add one inch to his shirt it would consume the entire cotton crop of the South. " And China is not the only country where there are vast opportunities for increasing our cotton trade. We should decrease our cotton supply, when it becomes necessary, but a worthier task is to try to increase the demand, and thereby help civilize and uplift other nations as well as benefit ourselves. CHAPTER VIII. STOPPING THE LEAKS IN COTTON PROFITS It is not true, as a distinguished authority has charged, that our general methods of growing and handling cotton are "as bad as can be;" but it is true that they are susceptible of vast improvement, and that enormous leaks in cotton profits are yet to be stopped. Perhaps the most serious menace to cotton farming at this time is the boll weevil, but as that subject is reserved for a later chapter, 1 shall not discuss it here. One of the greatest leaks that any industry has ever known was the utter waste of cottonseed for a hundred years. Cottonseed used to be regarded as of so little use, in fact so much in the way, that cotton gins within the last two generations have been built over streams in order that the seed might be easily washed away! In some States laws have actually been passed requiring ginners, for the sake of the public health, to remove the rotting piles of waste seed ! $100,000,000 FROM A PRODUCT ONCE THOUGHT WORSE THAN WORTHLESS Now the raw cottonseed are worth nearly $100, 000,000, or about one-fifth the value of the cotton (63) COTTON 69 crop, and so rapidly are we finding new uses for them — all of which will be considered at greater length in other chapters in this book — that Mr. Edward Atkinson was probably not far wrong when he declared that it would be worth while for the South to grow great crops of cotton, even if the plant made no lint at all but seed only. How varied are the uses of cottonseed — meal, oil, hulls and linters — has been suggested in the Introduction to this volume. The great trouble is that in the new awakening to the enormous value of cottonseed as a fertilizer, we have not yet come to a proper appreciation of their value as a feed also; for, in fact, we may feed them and still get three-fourths of their fertil- izing value in the manure from the animals. How unusually nutritious they are as a food may be guessed from the fact that for feeding purposes 100 pounds of cottonseed equals in value 116 pounds corn, and 100 pounds cottonseed meal equals 175 pounds corn. Cottonseed at 25 cents a bushel or cottonseed meal at $25 a ton is as cheap as corn at 40 cents a bushel. Tne folly, therefore, of burying this most val- uable of cattle feeds — burying it unused to rot in the soil — must be apparent to all. What should we think of using wheat bran or corn meal as a fertilizer for cotton without first having our live stock extract its feeding value? Yet in the one State in which the authors live, about $3,000,000 worth of cottonseed meal is used as a fertilizer— which means that $2,500,000 in feeding values goes to nothing, and is a dead loss to our agricul- tural interests. 70 COTTON FEEDING VALUE OF COTTONSEED NOT YET APPRECIATED Moreover, we are learning more and more each year of the feeding values of cottonseed meal — learning how to combine it with other feeds and feed in larger proportions to different classes of stock. In fact, its use as a human food has been seriously contemplated, a thoughtful journal re- cently declaring that "if cotton grew in Michigan, Battle Creek would be marketing a hundred thousand tons of the cottonseed meal mixed with wheat flour and put up in pound packages . It would be advertised, and with truth, as the only complete ration for the human race. A pound of cottonseed meal contains all the elements necessary for whole- some, nutritious bread; it contains three times as much digestible protein as the highest grade of wheat flour or the best oatmeal; it contains twice as much oil as oatmeal and ten times as much oil as wheat flour." Whether or not we shall ever have cottonseed meal breakfast food, the fact remains that in using it as a fertilizer we are wasting millions in animal feeding values every year — and this is one great leak in cotton profits we shall eventually learn to stop. WASTEFUL TO BUY NITROGENOUS FERTILIZERS We are also wasting millions of dollars for the purchase of nitrogenous fertilizers, when the cow pea might be made to keep our Southern soils abundantly supplied with this most costly of all fertilizing ingredients. Making a rough guess we should say that the farmers in the Carolinas and COTTON 71 Georgia spend at least $8,000,000 a year for commercial nitrogen, when a proper system of rotation, including leguminous crops, would abun- dantly supply the soil with this ingredient. And this is Leak No. 2 which we can stop and thereby transfer millions to the credit side of King Cotton's ledger. THE BARBAROUS SAW GIN DESTROYS MILLIONS IN COTTON VALUES There has been no noteworthy improvement in the cotton gin since the new-born idea was first worked out by Eli Whitney; and our baling methods are also notoriously inefficient. " It is contended/ ' says Mr. Thomas P. Grasty, "that the saw gin actually wastes or destroys over 6 per cent, of all the cotton raised in the Southern States — meaning the destruction each year of nearly $40,000,000 worth of property belonging to the farmers of the South. " By its rough handling it is also asserted by the highest authorities, that the saw gin destroys over 40 per cent, of the initial strength of the cotton fiber. No wonder one of our American cotton specialists is on record as declaring cotton to be ' the most barbarously handled commercial prod- uct in the world." Besides the waste, the de- struction of fiber, and the lack of uniformity in size of bales, gins at present are able to pack cotton at the average density of only fourteen pounds per cubic foot. Every bale not sold to local mills, therefore, must be sent to some cotton compress and the size reduced two-thirds before it can be exported. A fortune awaits the man who will invent a compress requiring small horse power, so that the 72 COTTON bales with one handling at the gin may be com- pressed tightly enough for export purposes; just as a fortune awaits the man who will invent a roller gin for upland cotton or any other econom- ical plan by which the present wastes and the barbarous laceration of the fiber may be obviated. With American inventive talent put to this task, we may hope before many years to stop this drain on the wealth of the cotton farmer. MARKETING AND EXPORTING THE CROP Another waste in former days was in marketing the crop, but here there has been in recent years a marvellous gain in directness and economy. For- merly the farmer sold to his merchant at the county seat; the merchant at the county seat sold to the commission merchant at the State capital; the commission merchant sold to the dealer at the seaport; the seaport dealer sold to the New York exporter; the New York exporter sold to Liverpool, and Liverpool sold to Manchester. Now all this is changed — how greatly changed will be seen from the report of a cotton exporting house which handles more than 300,000 bales each season. "The cotton is now bought on the plantations or at the railway stations throughout the whole Cotton Belt by the representatives of large exporting houses and by the mills, " said the manager of this house to us the other day. "Our firm employs more than 100 buyers for this purpose, and the cotton is shipped daily to the port where it is expeditiously sampled, classified, weighed, com- pressed and loaded upon ships for foreign ports with almost incredible swiftness. We have had a train loaded with cotton fifty miles from port at 7 a.m., and at 7 p.m. of the same day it has been SOUTHERN VIEWS. Good roads make cotton transportation easy; the second picture indicates the negro's easy habits; the third view is that of a typical old-fashioned Southern "Big- house." MORE SCENES FROM DIXIE. The patient ox has not been entirely discarded, as the top picture testifies; the second is a warehouse view. COTTON 78 stored on board a foreign ship and bills of exchange drawn and negotiated!" In view of these facts we may regard this leak in the export trade as belonging to the past rather than to the present. SHIPPING 60% OF OUR COTTON TO EUROPE Lastly we come to what is perhaps the greatest leak of all — not to the cotton farmer solely, but to the Cotton Belt. We are still shipping 60 per cent, of our cotton to Europe — almost as uneconomic, as has been said, as it would be to ship our iron ore instead of turning it into the finished product here. And in view of the leaks we are to stop and the great resultant savings that are to enrich the South, and in view of the prospective remedying of this last great leak, we cannot better conclude this chapter than by quoting an extract from an address by Mr. Richard H. Edmonds, of the Manufac- turer's Record, delivered in New York City a few months ago — not a mere day dream, a flight of fancy, but a prediction of what actually bids fair to come to pass within the lifetime of most of those who read this article: "It is not to be expected that the South will ever manufacture its entire cotton production, for, when it has reached the point where it consumes in its own mills the 10,500,000 bales which now measure its average crop, the world will be demanding of it, and it will meet the world's demands for, probably 20,000,000 bales. But the utilization in its own mills of 10,000,000 bales would mean the employment of 1,000,000 operatives, the invest- ment in mills, textile machinery, building pi ant sand kindred enterprises, of not less than $2,000,000,000 74 COTTON and the annual output would be worth $2,000,- 000,000. "Then, indeed, would the South, without mon- opolizing the world's cotton manufacturing in- terests, be the dominant factor, the center of the world's cotton mill business, producing 20,000,000 bales and consuming at home in its own mills 10,000,000 bales. "Both will come about in due time. The South sees before it this prize, rich beyond words to describe, creating wealth beyond anything which this section or any other section has known, and this is the prize — a prize great enough to enrich an empire — for which it has entered the race. That it will win admits of no question. " SECTION II. THE COTTON PLANT— HOW IT GROWS AND IS GROWN (75) CHAPTER IX. STRUCTURE AND BOTANICAL RELATIONS The several species of every plant or animal known to man have been properly classified and grouped. It has required untold labor and pains through years and centuries to make this important contribution to the total sum of knowledge, but the result is well worth the effort it has cost. A discussion of the causes that have entered into the production of families, species and varieties would not be in place here, but some of them are so interesting and so intimately concerned with the development and improvement of the cotton plant as to make it necessary to consider them briefly. The cotton plant is a member of the Malvaceae or mallow family, and to scientists is known by the generic name Gossypium. The plant is given to much variation, and a very large number of varieties are the result. Differences in soil, in climate, and in environment have been the primary factors in producing these variations. INFLUENCE OF HEREDITY In the perpetuation of any plant or animal the importance of heredity is recognized by all. It is, in fact, the keeper of all that has gone before. Good or evil, helpful or harmful, its influence is to (77) 78 COTTON hand down to the future race all the life of the past. Like surely begets like. Offspring of either plant or animal inherit the essential characteristics that were a vital part of the parental stock. These inherited characteristics, however, are always sub- ject to change as a result of change in environment. If any plant or animal were confined to a par- ticular soil, feeding on the same food, and with un- varying climatic conditions, then all members of the tribe or species would grow more and more similar in type, form, and quality. Only in non- essentials would differences appear. The American deer, for example, grown under the same conditions of habit, food and climate, for so long a time, has developed the most remarkable uniformity. Only the most careful observer is able to note individual peculiarities of form, color, or outline. Let the American breeder take this same animal and place it under a new environment, and a change will be noticed very early in his breeding operations. This change of environment gives the law known as variation an opportunity to show its power and influence. The cotton plant has been subjected to this change in environment. We can neither tell you when nor how it happened. Mere conjecture would suggest only a starting point. Still the fact remains that cotton was early known in India, Egypt, Corea, China, South America, and the Lesser Antilles. How the plant got to any of these countries no one knows, and possibly no one will ever know. The important fact is this : there are great differences in soil, climate, and environment between China and South America, between India and the South Sea Islands, between Egypt and COTTON 79 China; and these very differences have given rise to the many kinds and varieties of cotton we know to-day. Besides the factors above considered as influen- cing the tendency to variation, the cotton plant responds perhaps more freely than any other cul- tivated plant to ameliorated conditions of soil, climate, and cultivation. THE COTTON PLANT To understand its characteristics you must know the cotton plant itself. Its weed, flower, fiber, seed and growth are interesting — each and every one. In growth the stalk assumes a herbaceous, shrubby, or tree-like form. None but these her- baceous, shrub-like forms are grown to any extent in this country. You will find the larger and tree- like varieties grown occasionally, but only as curiosities, since with them the low mean tem- perature of the Cotton Belt is unfavorable to the production of lint of any commercial value. The cotton plant of the Southern States is a small annual shrub from two to four feet in height, always branching extensively. The limbs are longest at the bottom of the stalk, and short and light at the top, this top growth in all parts of the South usually being arrested by frost. The flowers are white, or pale yellow or cream colored the first day, become darker and redder the second day, and fall to the ground on the third or fourth day, leaving a tiny boll developed in the calyx. This boll develops and enlarges until maturity when it is not unlike the size and shape of a hen's egg. When matured, the boll cracks and opens the three to six apartments which hold the seed and the 80 COTTON fibrous wool known as lint that is now to be gather ed, ginned, and baled. This lint, when separated from the seed becomes the cotton of commerce. • COMMERCIAL TYPES The types' of cotton chiefly known in a com- mercial way are Gossypium Barbadense or Sea Island Cotton, Gossypium Herbaceum or Upland Cotton, Gossypium Hirsutum, also Upland Cot- ton, Gossypium Arboreum or Tree Cotton, and Gossypium Neglectum or Indian Cotton. SEA ISLAND COTTON (Gossypium Rarbadense) This species is one of the most important grown and is cultivated most extensively along the coast of South Carolina, and in Georgia and Florida, and the off -lying Islands. The amount of lint produced is less than from Upland Cotton, but it sells for a higher price on account of its longer staple and better quality. "Yarns having the finest counts, as they are called, are all spun from Sea Island." It has been shown that a single pound of Sea Island Cotton can be spun into a thread 160 miles in length. The acreage devoted to this species is small, consequent- ly Sea Island Cotton influences the market yield but little. UPLAND COTTON (Gossypium Herbaceum) This is of Asiatic origin, adapted to upland, and has its botanical name from the character of its growth. India is supposed to be the original home of the herbaceous type, but it has spread extensively until it is known in China, Arabia, Persia, and Africa. 2 * O - H §1 w " ffl t3 HOLDING FOR BETTER PRICES. Many farmers now refuse to sell in the rush of ginning season, but store arid hold in the hope of getting better prices. Many of the storage warehouses are of enor- mous capacity. COTTON 81 The vine cotton of Cuba belongs to this species, and is peculiar because of its large pods and ex- cessive number of seeds. The Long Staple Upland Cotton grown in America belongs to this species. UPLAND COTTON (Gossypium Hirsutum) The hairy nature of every part of the plant gives this species its name. It is not greatly different from the Sea Island group of cotton ; in fact it is claimed by some to be an offspring of the Sea Island. Generally thought to have originated in Mexico, it has now been car- ried to all parts of the world. In a sense it is a Short Staple Upland Cotton, and to this species belong nearly all the American types. TREE COTTON (Gossypium Arboretum) Its tall-growing and tree-like proportions sug- gested the name for this India-bred species. In height it is often as much as twenty feet. The fiber is short and fine, and clings very tenaciously to the seeds. No varieties of this kind are grown on this con- tinent for commercial purposes, and not even in India, where it is principally cultivated, is it a very valuable type of cotton. There it is said to be perennial, lasting five or six years or more, and is never used as a field crop. INDIAN OR BUSH COTTON (Gossypium Neglectum) This species is also indigenous to India where it is extensively grown as a field crop. The boll is 82 COTTON small in size and contains only a small number of seeds. It is said that the beautiful Dacca Cotton, from which the famous muslins are made,. is of the Neglectum type, and so are the varieties from which the long cloth of Madras is manufactured. THE COTTON FIBER The commercial grading of cotton depends al- most entirely on the ripeness, length, and fineness of the cotton fiber. The long, fine, silky fibers of the Sea Island varieties command the highest price, while the native Indian and Short Upland staple of America represent the lowest market values. The following table arranged by Evans shows the average length and average diameter of the staple of some of our best known varieties : LENGTH AND DIAMETER OF PRINCIPAL COTTON FIBERS Av. Length Av. Diam. Variety of Staple of Staple Sea Island 1.61 .000640 New Orleans 1.02 .000775 Texas 1 .00 .000763 Upland 93 .000763 Egyptian 1.41 .000655 Native Indian .89 . 000844 You will see in glancing at the above table that the longer the staple the less is its diameter, a fact which must always be kept in mind in any ex- periments looking to the selection and improve- ment of the cotton plant. COTTON 83 When the cotton fiber reaches maturity it as- sumes a tubelike appearance, somewhat irregular and flattened. Three classes of fibers are always found in every picking — unripe, half-ripe, and ripe. Of course the time of picking influences the relative percent- ages of each, though late picking of seed cotton will not entirely overcome the difficulty, since these three are differences in maturity of the filaments on different parts of the same seed. Unripe cotton is thin and transparent, has little or no twist, and has little use in manufacture. This explains why cotton picked too early com- mands a lower price at the warehouse. THE COTTON BOLL The boll is the house of seed and lint. In it are from three to five apartments or cells (often more than five in improved types) which hold the com- mercial product from the earliest formation of the lint after blooming until it is picked in the fall. As the seed and lint increase in size and quantity, the boll likewise enlarges to accommodate its grow- ing interior. When maturity is reached the doors of the apartment rooms open, lint and seed expand, and present the beautiful white, silky wool that is soon to be gathered and stored. It is a picture indeed, the full cotton field, white with its open bolls and ready for the harvest hands. The plant and the planters have almost ended their work, and the world now awaits the result not without interest. The pickers are in the field, early and late, gathering the white "tree wool" as fast as their hands can pluck it from the bolls. Here and there all about the picked territory, are 84 COTTON seen the snowy piles of gathered product, ready for the owner to weigh and store in some sheltered place. Cotton picking time has come again, and spinners and consumers in every quarter of the earth listen with eagerness for news of the South's great annual harvest! CHAPTER X. VARIETIES OF COTTON AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION In a previous chapter we have discussed the tendency of all plants and animals to vary from normal characteristics when removed to new fields, different climates, and changed conditions of environment. The cotton plant is especially sus- ceptible to all influences, to such an extent, in fact, that in our country alone there are now more than one hundred and fifty varieties listed. Of course not all of these are true varieties. Often a variety will have one or more names even in the same territory. This state of affairs is confusing and undesirable, but it is not peculiar to the cotton crop. With corn and wheat, in fact with all the prominent crops grown in America, we have the same difficulty, the same multiplicity of names. This condition usually arises from the fact that a new character, differing from the normal, is seen in the plant, leading the grower to think that he is justified in giving the variety a new name. With the cotton plant the change may lie in the direction of increased length and fineness of fiber; increased yield of lint, or seed, or both; early or late maturing qualities; a superior character in boll, or a change in physical growth. Still it matters not how superior a new character may be, a local name is not justified until that special (85) 86 COTTON feature is fixed as a different characteristic of this species in the cotton race. When that fact has been established it is altogether proper for the new variety to have a new name, just as we should give a new name to a new kind of apple. A SIMPLE CLASSIFICATION The simplest classification of Upland varieties that we have seen has been made by Professor Duggar of Alabama. He makes seven distinct groups as follows: 1. Cluster, or Dickson Type. 2. Semi-Cluster, or Peerless Type. 3. Rio Grande, or Peterkin Type. 4. Short Limb, or King Type. 5. Big Boll, or Duncan Type. 6. Long Limb Upland, or Petit Gulf Type. 7. Long Staple Upland, or Allen Type. Such a grouping as this enables us to place a given variety as readily as we class horses into draft, coach, or roadster types. General charac- teristics in this manner may be readily fixed without confusion or difficulty. GROUPS OF COTTON Following the classification of cotton into these seven groups we find characteristics more or less peculiar to each. Of course it is not to be expected that classification will provide for striking lines of demarcation for every variety. It does not do this for horses. The heavy coach horse blends into the type of the light draft on one hand and into the roadster on the other. So we should expect some varieties of one group of cotton to merge into COTTON 87 another group by imperceptible gradation. But in a general way the several types may be described as follows: I. CLUSTER DICKSON TYPE No long limbs at base; bolls tend to grow in clusters; plants tall, slender, and erect; base limbs often long; and seed usually small; seed covered with thick fuzz, usually white in color; early maturing; percentage of lint from 32 to 34. • Important Varieties of Grtup: Dickson Jackson Wellborn Wellborn's Pet Jackson's Limbless II. SEMI-CLUSTER — PEERLESS TYPE Base limbs of medium length, and above these along main stem are very short limbs; stalk erect; bolls more or less in clusters ; seed of medium size, well covered with fuzz which may be whitish, greenish or brownish; early to medium maturing; percentage of lint from 29 to 35. Important Varieties of Group: Peerless Hawkins' Prolific Boyd Hawkins' Jumbo Cummings Herndon Drake Herndon's Select Deering Minor . Norris Tyler 88 COTTON III. RIO GRANDE — PETERKIN TYPE Plants well branched and medium in size; bolls small; seed black, quite small and bare of fuzz except at tip end; medium maturing; percentage of lint large, usually 35. Important Varieties of Group: Peterkin Texas Wood Peterkin's Limb Cluster Wise Excelsior Texas Oak IV. SHORT LIMB KING TYPE Plants small and well branched at both base and top; limbs short; bolls small; seed medium in size and thickly covered with fuzz of brownish (and sometimes of greenish) shade; quite early maturing; percentage of lint from 32 to 34. Important Varieties of Group: King King's Improved No. 1 Lowry King's Improved No. 2 V. BIG BOLL DUNCAN TYPE Plants large, heavy and strong; well limbed at base, but upper limbs short; bolls very large; seeds large and covered with thick fuzz, whitish in color; CQTT.ON 89 late maturing generally; percentage of- lint from 29 to 34. Important Varieties of Group: Duncan Culpepper Banks Culpepper's Improved Christopher Grayson Truitt Russell Thrash Lee Strickland Lee's Improved No. 1 Strickland's Improved Lee's Improved No. 2 Coppedge Scroggins VI. LONG LIMB UPLAND — PETIT GULF TYPE Plants very large; limbs long and straggling; bolls medium in size and covered with fuzz of various shades; late maturing; percentage of lint 30 to 32. Important Varieties of Group: Petit Gulf Cheise Gunn Ellis Ellis's Big Boll VII. LONG STAPLE UPLAND — ALLEN TYPE Plants large and heavy and require good moist soil; lower limbs very long and open; bolls medium in size, but long, slender and tapering; seed medium to large, covered with whitisn tint of fuzz; late maturing; staple long; percentage of lint from 25 to 29. 90 COTTON Important Varieties of Group: Allen's Improved Doughty Allen's Hybrid Griffin Matthews Cobweb Cook Moon SELECTING A VARIETY You must exercise care and judgment in select- ing a variety of cotton for seed purposes. A variety which yields well in one place may not do so well with you where perhaps it may have a differ- ent soil and climate. A variety may stand at the very head one year in a comparative test with other varieties, but fall toward the foot the very next season. Seasons are not all the same, and they materially affect the yield of the same variety from year to year. You must bear this fact in mind and not jump at conclusions hastily. It is the largest quantity of seed cotton you are seeking, and a variety that yields uniformly well from year to year is a great deal better than a spec- tacular one that shines meteor-like when the season is just right. An honest, average yielder is always safe and re- liable, and can be improved by selection and care to suit your soil and climate and environment. In the end, too, it will become better and better because it has had time to adapt itself to the home life you have provided for it. It will reward you for this attention by obeying every reasonable demand you make. And these demands you have in mind should include : (1) A longer staple; (2) uniformity in length of VARIETIES OF COTTON. (A) Peer'.ess group; (B) Peterkin Cotton; (C) Duncan group; The Peterkin is one of the best known varieties; the Duncan group is very large boiled. VARIETIES OF COTTON (A) Dickson type; (B) King type; (C) show; ?eed and lint of Sea Island Cot- ton; (D) Allen Long Staple; (E) Petit Gulf. COTTON 91 fiber; (3) strength of fiber; (4) a greater yield in lint and seed. THE STAPLE SHOULD BE LONG If you examine the staple in several bolls of any variety, you will find a certain degree of variation in length. We all know that the longer the staple is, the better price we get for it. Hence, every cotton grower should endeavor to grow a longer staple. This can be done by going into the field and carefully examining bolls of the most promising appearance, selecting for seed purposes such as have greater length of staple than the average. This practice should be followed year after year, whatever the variety you are growing. FIBERS SHOULD BE OF UNIFORM LENGTH Cotton, like wool — indeed like any fiber of com- mercial importance — is graded according to its evenness and uniformity of length. And this practice of grading is not limited to fibers, but goes out in all directions and includes corn, wheat, and other field crops. Consequently seed cotton should be so selected that the tendency to produce fibers of uniform length may be bred in the plant. FIBER SHOULD BE STRONG Not only length, but strength of fiber also, is a most desirable quality, and should be considered in every operation that pertains to the improve- ment of any variety of cotton. The Sea Island type is especially noted for the quality of strength, 92 COTTON and has been selected after years of careful tests made to develop a variety required for cloth of durability and strength. RELATIVE PERCENTAGE OF FIBER SHOULD BE LARGE An essential quality for every variety of cotton to possess is the ability to produce a high quantity of lint in proportion to seed. This quality is funda- mental, for lint yield is usually the first trait con- sidered by any grower. In fact, a particular variety is selected, as a rule, because of the claim that it is a heavy yielder. Careful attention, then, at the time of gathering and selecting seed — making constant effort to improve by selecting from plants with this tendency to increase the yield — will prove one of the most satisfactory ways of adapting the variety to your environments, and of rendering it reliable as the breed for your special purposes. CHAPTER XI. BREEDING UP THE COTTON PLANT The average yield of cotton in the United States is about 190 pounds of lint, to the acre. At ten cents per pound the gross income from a cotton crop then, is only $19.00 per acre plus the value of seed. This is certainly none too much when you consider the cost of necessary fertilizing materials and the labor involved in all operations from planting to marketing. Now to increase the gross income, but two ways are. open to us: either (1) increase the market price for raw cotton or (2) increase the number of pounds of lint and seed per acre. The latter seems to be most reasonable from an economic standpoint. Ten cent cotton, under good labor and crop conditions, is an equitable price to both producer and consumer. A price less than ten cents is unwise because it means hard living for growers and laborers. HOW IMPROVEMENT MAY BE BROUGHT ABOUT The problem before us then is to increase the production of cotton per acre. How shall this be done? The following five reforms will help : J(l) Improve the soil. (2) Get a variety suitable to your environments. (93) 94 COTTON (3) Use improved tools and implements for all operations. (4) Manure in such a way as to promote the physical improvement of the soil. (5) Use seed that has been improved by selection, and continue the selection that more improvement may follow. Let us discuss the last named suggestion first, since seed stock is always of primary importance. None of us can deny the influence of good breeding. It is only the well selected, carefully bred trotter or pacer that ever makes a record on any race track; even in beef for our tables, a scrub makes a tough, insipid product; and in the dairy, profit comes only with carefully chosen milk cattle. Blood tells in men, in animals, in plants. It tells in cotton — in yield of seed and lint; in length, in strength, in all other desirable features of the fiber. Not to select seed with care and according to some definite plan, therefore, is wasteful, costly, unprofitable. A PROBLEM FOR THE INDIVIDUAL FARMER The day when any cotton planter can afford to plant just any variety of any sort of seed has truly passed. Good farm management in cotton grow- ing, as in any kind of plant or animal production, calls for the use of good seed only, seed possessing qualities desired by commerce, and the ability to display these qualities under the individual grower's special soil, climate, and conditions. But to get best results, you will have to investi- gate for yourself. The Agricultural College and Experiment Station can determine fundamental VARIETIES OF COTTON. (A, B) American Upland, Southern types; (C) Sea Island (Long Staple) Cot- ton; (D) Asiatic Cotton. ECONOMICAL AND EXPENSIVE COTTON MAKING. The first picture is that of planting with a slow ox — "free nigger farming" it is called; in the second picture we have cost of cultivation reduced to a minimum by improved i COTTON 95 facts only. Their application must be worked out by each individual planter on his own individual farm. Nor is this difficult. You must put out of your mind the idea that seed selection is costly, or that it involves unusual labor. An axe that is sharp- ened is an improved axe; a plow that turns a deep furrow and pulverizes the soil in an efficient manner is better than one that does not; a hog that reaches maturity on a given amount of food in nine months is superior to one of any breed or class which uses an equal amount of food and requires ten months for maturity. So a particular cotton plant which shows a larger number of desirable characteristics than other stalks underthe same soil, climate, and other influences is an improved specimen; and it is simple waste, as has been said, not to use its powers to the full extent in furnishing seed for the next year's crop. SEVEN POINTS OF IMPROVEMENT But what are desirable qualities to be sought? We discussed some of these qualities in a previous chapter. There are, in all, the following: (1) Better yield of fiber (2) Greater length of staple (3) More uniformity in length (4) Greater strength in fiber (5) Ability to resist disease (6) Increased yield in seed (7) Greater effort to make the plant at home. These characteristics are important, all of them. They must be kept in mind with every effort to improve the seed. And next we have only to remember that the 96 COTTON laws at work in seed production are the same as those at work in animal breeding: — heredity and variation. All horses have some characteristics in common; in certain respects all cattle are alike; hogs are never confused with sheep ; each species has its own special characteristics; birds have feathers, bills, and wings. Heredity establishes features common to each class. We class horses into breeds. Some are heavy-muscled, short-limbed and strong. They make the draft breeds and appear similar in form, type, and outline. But some horses are long- limbed, long and lithe in form and muscle, and swift in speed. They form the roadster type. Why do we find these extreme types ? The answer lies in the fact that they have been bred to do special work and have acquired distinct charac- teristics that they may do that work more easily. The change from the normal form or type began because peculiarities are not absolutely fixed or made stable by heredity except along essential lines, and even these are subject to change. This change in variation is quite noticeable when you observe minor characteristics. All horses look alike, yet no two horses are exactly the same. They differ in a hundred ways. So with plants. So with cotton. Varieties of cotton are similar in essentials. The root, the stem, the leaf, the bloom, the boll, the fiber, the seed, are not to be mistaken. You may not be able to name the variety, but you know the plant. In all varieties of cotton these character- istics are similar, and you are not deceived. The variation that concerns you most is in the amount of seed or lint, the length, strength and COTTON 97 uniformity of staple — qualities which count in the market place. And as you grow cotton for the market you must produce what the market de- mands. DO ONE THING AT A TIME You will make a mistake if you attempt the improvement of your cotton in all directions at one time. It would be too big a task to undertake, even though you should devote your whole time to the work. Work in one direction, therefore; the one most important to you. When your effort here has resulted in improvement and becomes fixed and stable, begin work in another direction, but on the stock you have so far improved. Remember it does not require money or much extra labor to work in one given direction. What you do expend in this way comes back to you with rewards a hundred fold. Set yourself to improve your cotton in one particular quality: always select plants that will produce most of marketable lint and seed. This you can readily determine by a thorough field examination. HOW TO SELECT SEED The most productive plants in any given variety are those that have the largest, best-formed, and most numerous bolls. The eye will readily detect these plants. Select one hundred of the choicest bolls from superior plants for your initial work the coming season. From this quantity you will secure from 3,500 to 4,500 seed, which will be sufficient for planting a seed plot of at least a quarter of an acre, and this should produce some- 98 COTTON thing like fifteen bushels of seed at picking time. This quantity in turn will give selected seed for fifteen acres the following year. Continue to select one hundred of the choicest bolls each year for your seed plot of the succeeding year. Such a system of seed selection should be perpetually practised by planters throughout the South, and should of course improve the seed stock to a high degree, greatly increasing the productive- ness and greatly accentuating all the desirable qualities of the plant. THE SEED PLOT Locate your seed plot on a soil offering conditions similar to those of the rest of your cotton area. To locate your plot on a sandy soil, for example, if the main crop is to be grown on a rich, heavy, clay formation, would be manifest folly. Select a type of soil, then, like that on which the general crop is to be cultivated, but enrich it; for you will get the best and most vigorous seed from plants well nurtured and grown under most favorable conditions. You will make no mistake in fertilizing well and following with thorough cultivation throughout the growing season. STUDY INDIVIDUAL PLANTS By a study of individual plants you can carry the selection of your cotton still further. No two plants are alike in every detail. They vary in a hundred and one ways. They vary in their ability to transmit superior qualities to their progeny. And this is an important consideration. COTTON 99 The animal breeder calls this quality pre- potency. It represents the faculty of transmission of parental qualities to offspring. Some animals do this to a remarkable degree. Some plants do. Study your individual cotton plants so that you may know which plants are pre-potent and which ones are not. Where this transmitting power is weak, you will have less desirable breeding stock, and this you should discard. Preserve seed from plants only that are able to propagate their in- dividual qualities and merits ; otherwise your prog- ress will be slow. Now as to the best way of putting this principle into effect: suppose you have selected one hun- dred bolls and these have come from several plants. You can label the seed at planting time, from every boll, or at least those from particular plants, and determine the transmitting power. This makes more work, but it greatly facilitates the breeding operations. SELECTION IS NOT SLOW Nor is the selection of seed a slow process for increasing yield of lint and seed. Its practice will show results even the first year. A good farmer of our acquaintance last year grew cotton at the rate of one thousand pounds of seed per acre from seed of three years' selection, while the ordinary seed under the same conditions as to soil, fertilizers etc., produced only 700 pounds per acre. Similar- ly, in your field in any growing season there are doubtless plants which will yield at the rate of five hundred pounds of seed cotton per acre; others, a thousand pounds; still others will produce at the rate of fifteen hundred or 2500 pounds of seed cotton per acre. 100 COTTON Why this difference ? They are grown on the same soil; moistened by the same rains; brightened by the same sunshine; they have enjoyed the same tillage, fertilization and culture; and yet they differ in many ways. The solution of the problem is heredity. Like begets like. We expect much from civilized races of men; but less from the untrained, the child-like. In the vegetable world we can readily apply the same principle. We will not use for seeding purposes the small yielders, the little doers. But this elimination must be done in the field at picking time. We can do no mixing. We must secure seed from the superior plants and keep it separate from the general lot. It must be ginned separately, too, else our pains and labor will come to naught. By discarding seed from poorly producing plants, and securing it only from the best, the pro- cess of improvement will work quickly and surely, and will reward the planter even more liberally than he might expect. This means, furthermore, that we shall abandon the practice of getting seed for planting at the gin except from cotton previously gathered from selected plants and set aside for planting purposes. SELECT MORE THAN ONE PLANT The plan of selecting more than one plant for breeding stock is a good one, since it gives you better opportunity for the study of the transmitting power of each individual; and this increased num- ber of plants for breeding purposes also aids you greatly in approaching the special type you are endeavoring to evolve. S5 .S •— 8 O -3 Z ol COTTON 101 A plan suggested by Dr. Webber of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, shows the simplicity of breeding cotton, and is illustrated in the diagram below : 1st year CD (Individual plant first selected) m Diagram Illustrating Method of Selecting Cotton PEDIGREED STOCK The Sea Island planters on the islands off the coast of South Carolina follow a method of selec- tion almost exactly like the plan advised by Dr. Webber. When first introduced into this country from the West Indies, Sea Island cotton was a perennial and quite unsuited to our climatic conditions. A plan of selection, faithfully executed with the purpose of using only early-maturing plants, has resulted in making the Sea Island variety thoroughly at home in its new environments — so much so that to-day this variety stands foremost in length and fineness of staple. Cotton bred with a definite purpose in the breed- er's mind; selected from year to year because of 102 COTTON merit and worth; adapted to soil, climate, and methods of fertilization and culture, is "highly bred" cotton in name and in fact, and in every sense is pedigreed stock. Such strains are worth many times their cost, and give ample reward for any additional labor that needs to oe given them. BREED COTTON TOWARD AN IDEAL The animal breeder has succeeded in producing marvelous strains of various classes of farm animals. He has succeeded because he worked toward an ideal. Some standard of excellence is no less surely needed that the cotton planter may be guided in the improvement of his crop. And in working toward such an ideal, as has al- ready been suggested, those traits which count for much in the sale of the commercial product, must be given first consideration. Those factors are: An abundance of bolls A boll of large size Heavy yield in lint Fiber of good length High percentage of lint Fiber that is fine Fiber of good strength Fibers uniform in length. With these factors and their relative importance in mind we suggest a score card as follows : A PROPOSED SCORE CARD FOR COTTON (Large, 15 points Medium, 10 points Small, 5 points COTTON 103 A PROPOSED SCORE CARD FOR COTTON (Continued) ( Large, 15 points - B. Size of Boll < Medium, 10 points 15 points ( Small, 5 points {Heavy, 15 points Medium, 10 points Light, 5 points {2 inches, 15 points If inch., 12 points 1^ inch., 8 points 1J inch., 5 points {35, 15 points 30, 10 points 25, 5 points f Fine, 10 points F. Fineness of Lint < Medium, 7 points 10 points (Coarse, 5 points f Strong, 10 points G. Strength of Fiber < Medium, 7 points 10 points (Weak, 5 points ( Good, 5 points H. Uniformity in Length < Medium, 3 points 5 points (Poor, 1 point CHAPTER XII. THE KING S REALM, THE LAND OF SUNSHINE The great cotton producing section of the United States lies a little below latitude 37°. This nearly coincides with a line drawn from Norfolk, Virginia, to Cairo, Illinois, and marks the northern limit of profitable cotton culture. (Of course, the cooler mountain region of this section must be eliminated.) Here then is the Cotton Belt of America, and to this region the world looks for its annual supply of raw cotton. New areas, favorable to cotton production, will be developed, as time goes on, but for all time to come the present cotton -growing States will likely furnish the greater portion of the world's needs. PECULIAR CLIMATE OF THE COTTON BELT The Cotton Belt has a somewhat variable climate. From its geographical situation it is naturally of moderate extremes, and favored by the winds that sweep over its territory. That equable tempera- ture which characterizes the zone of Gulf Stream influences has promoted the growth of the various agricultural and horticultural industries. Or- chards and vineyards thrive in the genial climate; trucking crops are nowhere better favored ; one can (104) COTTON 105 grow (and with profit) any agricultural plant in- digenous to America in almost any State in the belt. But though other crops are grown, cotton here is indeed king, and with improved soil con- ditions and wiser cultural methods will become recognized as the most powerful plant monarch in all the world. For profitable production, cotton requires: — A relatively high temperature A long growing season A moderate and well-distributed rainfall throughout the growing season A small amount of rain at maturing time A great deal of sunshine. These conditions are found in the Cotton Belt to a greater degree than anywhere else in the world. When they are prominent as features of any sea- son a maximum yield is produced. But let the growing season be short, the rainfall excessive, the amount of sunshine small, or the summer cool and cloudy, and the whole world will know in advance of the harvest that a small crop has been produced. RELATIVELY HIGH TEMPERATURE REQUIRED Broadly speaking the mean temperature is from 15 to 20 degrees higher in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Texas than in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. In winter the mean temperature is from 20 to 25 degrees higher in the South and in summer from 10 to 15 degrees higher. This climatic condition is especially favorable to cotton culture, since it means a long season free from frost or low temper- atures. Cotton enjoys a warm atmosphere, or even a hot atmosphere provided it is moist and reason- 106 COTTON ably constant. A sudden change in temperature bringing on a cold spell is objectionable, for it tends to check the growth of the plant, ripen its fruit, and influence its final yield unfavorably. A LONG GROWING SEASON At first cotton grows slowly. In a sense it is a tender plant. A light frost may do little injury; still it shortens the season and this is an undesirable risk. An ideal situation with regard to frost is to have the last spring frost no later than April 1st, and the earliest autumn one no earlier than Novem- ber. The Cotton Belt provides the much desired long growing season better than any other area of the earth's surface when other essentials and con- trolling influences are taken into account. RAINFALL PLAYS A PART More rain also falls in the Cotton Belt than in the northern section of the country. This excess varies from 30 to 50 per cent. The total rainfall, and the time rain falls, have much to do with successful cotton production. A moderately well-distributed rainfall is neces- sary during the growing season. A small amount is preferable to an excess, since grass is the bane of the cotton farmer; and grass is favored by much rainfall. When present it adds greatly to the cost of culture. The slow .growth of cotton while the plants are young allows grass and weeds to make rapid headway, and unless costly labor is con- stantly furnished, the tender cotton plants will be choked out in the race for growth and sunshine. COTTON 107 In fact, among planters nowadays, there is a tendency to delay the planting period because of this grass menace returning with each planting season. Where early maturing characteristics are bred into the plant this practice will prove desir- able, since it favors grass and weed destruction by reason of the general cultivation given before the crop is planted. The use of harrows and weeders immediately after planting, and for some weeks later, will materially assist in the battle which must be con- stantly waged against grass — against "General Green," as the Southern phrase has it. During the early growing period of the plant, not heavy storms, but rain in frequent showers, — - preferably at night with much sunshine during the day — is the sort of weather in which cotton rejoices. Dry weather during the maturing period, is especially favorable to cotton production, and happily for the farmer, this dryness is peculiarly prevalent throughout the Cotton Belt in late sum- mer and early fall. It is probable that the first half of the plant's life is the more important half. In the latter half, drought, excessive rains, insects, shedding of bloom and bolls, and even other troubles we have con- stantly. Still if the plant and the crop reaches July safely and in thrifty growing condition, the planter is reasonably sure that an average crop will be gathered. SUNSHINE OF PRIME IMPORTANCE Cotton grows only in warm lands where there is a great deal of sunshine. It is truly a sun plant, 108 COTTON the darling of Apollo. Wet, cloudy, and rainy days, except in so far as they are necessary to supply the comparatively small amount of moisture re- quired, have no place in its calendar, and are unfavorable to vigorous, abundant growth and to the yield of seed and lint. The blossom itself tells us this. In the morning of a bright, clear, warm day, it opens to its full extent to drink in the sun, but as soon as the damp evening approaches, it closes as if it would keep cold and dew wholly without. In every way the plant shows its nature and its longing for warmth and sunshine. Its green leaves even appear to turn to the east in the morning, waiting for the sun to rise, and seem, in a measure, to follow it in its course until it sets in the west; then they droop — as if the day's work were finished — and await the coming of the sun again. Climate has much to do with cotton. A native of tropical lands, it does its best in temperate cli- mates, and seems unable to venture beyond the limits of its adopted home. No other staple field crop in our country is so circumscribed. Other than grass, corn (our leading crop by acreage and production) has gone to every part but our western- most limits : wheat, oats, rye, though all somewhat choice of soil, yet fear neither heat nor cold; but cotton, wedded to the Southern sunshine, pines away and, Rachel-like, will not be comforted, when taken from its Dixie home. CHAPTER XIII. SOILS AND HOW TO HANDLE THEM There is no soil typical of the Cotton Belt. Cot- ton is grown alike on light sandy soils, on loams, on heavy clay soils, and on strong bottom lands, though naturally not with equal success on all of these varieties of soil. In a general way we may group the cotton lands into two great divisions — the uplands and the bottom lands. The former may be sub-divided into light sandy soils, and red and gray clay soils; while the latter embrace river-bottoms, basins and banks of small streams, the prairies and cane- brakes, and the valleys of the Mississippi and its branches. These soils vary greatly in origin, in composition, in productive power. Like other lands, they are subject to change; and respond to good treatment or suffer from inattention and neglect. In all parts of the South one sees cotton soils once abounding in fertility, but now so exhausted that they grow crops hardly worth the cost of seed, fertilizers and tillage. On the other hand, other cotton soils which inherited poverty through generations of thriftless ownership, are now noted for their high productive power. Every soil helps its owner in proportion to the (109) 110 COTTON owner's ability to help it. High pedigree, if one may use this term in this connection, counts for little, if a poor farmer owns the land. Just as the canvas reveals the training and the power of the artist, so the cotton soil testifies as to the intelligence and skill of the owner. THE SUPREME TEST OF THE PLANTER Power to make the soil produce remunerative crops is the supreme test of cotton farming. With- out this power, good prices for the staple, an ideal climate or situation, a propitious season, are of as little agricultural value as "sounding brass or tinkling cymbals." What then is needed ? This is needed: Knowledge of the soil and its management. The cotton farmer must so know his soil and its proper management that he can make it yield better crops ; that he can permanently improve it for the generations that are to come after him; that he can make not two, but five pounds of lint or seed grow where one grew before. These happy ends can be achieved only by the most in- telligent cultivation, and by the application of every principle of improvement revealed by modern science. HELPING NATURE The soil we know was once rock. Through countless years this primitive rock has been dis- integrating and making soil. The great forces of nature through ages and ages of recurring summer and winter have been at work on it. And soil build- ing never stops. Our cotton soils are being made to-day. But you must help nature in her effort to make your own soil more productive. You must COTTON 111 neither check nor discourage her. She wants your helping hand. If the soil has been robbed of its humus, you must return this important element; you must add chemical manures when needed ; you must plow deeply and effectively that a good seed bed be provided for the tender plants; legumes must be grown that their strong, deep-growing roots may add nitrogen and also penetrate and loosen the sub-soil, and bring to the upper layers the rich plant food of the fertile mines beneath. GOOD TILLAGE NEEDED Our Southern soils possess great possibilities for improvement. They are not exhausted and dead as generally supposed. Good tillage will help many of them as it helps soils devoted to other crops. The plow will do much to restore virgin fertility. It will assist nature in making plant food available for the tiny fibrous roots. The plow will let air and moisture into the soil that they may do their share in rendering hitherto locked-up plant food avail- able for the plant. Good tillage means more than turning a three or four inch furrow, as is the usual practice through most of the Cotton Belt. It means the gradual deepening of the root bed until ten or a dozen inches are turned to the air for purification and rejuvenation. CROP ROTATION NEEDED FOR COTTON LANDS Not only do our cotton lands need more thorough tillage, but through the greater part of the Cotton Belt the one-crop system is practiced. From its very nature it is a ruinous system, leading inevitably to the deterioration of the land. 112 COTTON Why is this true ? Because it does the following things : 1. It injures the texture of the soil by making light soils loose and open, and heavy soils dead and lifeless. 2. It destroys the humus of the soil; and no soil can remain fertile if it contains little or no organic matter. 3. It influences unfavorably the water content of the soil: light sandy soils with little vegetable matter are loose and open, and soon lose the moisture in them; heavy clay soils robbed of their vegetable matter quickly dry out and bake. 4. It influences unfavorably the amount of available plant food in the soil. Vegetable matter itself contains plant food and when used up, with no additional amount to replace it, the loss is soon felt. Plant food is lost also by leaching away in loose soils or by becoming insoluble in stiff heavy lands. 5. It draws too constantly on that special ratio of fertilizing ingredients most needed by the cotton plant. A crop following after one requiring a some- what different proportion of nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid, does much to restore the proper balance required for the most profitable cotton production. Continuous culture of cotton on any land, then, is undesirable. Its harmful influence may be over- come only by a system that involves a change of crops. Such a change of crops is suggested by nature herself. Cut a forest growth and a change of trees comes on. Pasture lands give way to many weeds and thistles; bluegrass and Bermuda drive out the clovers and timothy. Crops do better when fur- COTTON 113 nished new land and soil new to them. Just as an animal likes variety in food and a change of pasture, so the cotton plant wants occasionally, a new and fresh feeding ground. A SUGGESTED SCHEME OF CROP ROTATION In arranging an order of crop rotation that shall serve best your system of farming, it is well to bear in mind that plants vary : — 1. As to taste in kinds and quantity of plant food. 2. In feeding habits. 3. In the power to add humus to the soil, or (because of culture) to use it up. 4. In the ability of some, like cowpeas, alfalfa, and the clovers, to add nitrogen to the soil. These are only general rules but should be em- ployed whenever possible because their use will aid materially in the rapid improvement of cotton lands. An example of such a rotation is given herewith : FIRST YEAR SECOND YEAR THIRD YEAR Summer Fall Summer Winter Summer Winter Corn Cow- peas* Cotton Oats or Wheat Cow- peas Rye or Clover *Planted in corn at last cultivation. If you examine this three-year-course rotation you will find that it includes two nitrogen crops (cowpeas and clover) for soil improvement and hay; two cultivated crops (corn and cotton) for physical 114 COTTON improvement of the soil and to kill weeds; two grain and fiber crops (oats or wheat and cotton) for money crops; and two stock feeding crops (corn and clover or rye) for pasture, ensilage or stover. USE LEGUMES AND COVER CROPS Good soil management calls for some legumes to assist in keeping the land fertile and full of humus. The cowpea accomplishes this purpose best of all our legumes in the Cotton Belt, because it grows on every kind of soil, in wet or dry seasons, and in hot or warm temperatures. Rather than allow any land to lie idle as a " rest" year, sow it to cowpeas so as to furnish both hay for the work stock and humus and nitrogen for the soil. A cover crop like clover, oats, or wheat is also a great help, since it prevents washing of land during the winter months. We are confident that more soil fertility is lost by the washing and leaching of exposed soils during the winter season than the cotton crop removes from the land during the whole six months of its growth. The cotton farmer should include, therefore, cover crops and legumes in his system of crop rotation, that these important agents in soil im- provement, may do the great work they always stand ready to do for him. CHAPTER XIV. BRINGING EXHAUSTED SOILS BACK TO LIFE We have few cotton soils that are really worn-out. We merely call them so. We have treated them badly; so badly that they have become unre- sponsive to our calls. Some of these were good once, others were less valuable, but bad treatment, cruel neglect, and thoughtlessness of their com- fort, have contributed to making them what they are to-day. What shall we do with them ? We can do three things : (1) Turn them over to weeds and gullies. (2) Make forests out of them. (3) Bring them back to productiveness and beauty. Of course, we have no desire to give them over to weeds and gullies. We have already enough of each. Weeds come as nature's blessings to those abandoned fields, but the gully leaves only ruin and desolation to mark its track. Perhaps there are many areas where hills and rocks abound that might be used to better advantage if turned over to forest growth. Timber lands are becoming valuable, and with the coming years, will be still more valuable. Hence, lands difficult of tillage and cultivation might be better employed (115) 116 COTTON in bringing on new crops of timber for future generations that are to need them. Still, the greater part of these so-called worn-out lands may be reclaimed and brought back to the fructuous state they were in before the soil-robber came. The first step is this: Clean them up and give them the advantage of good appearance. If clothes make the man, good looks make the field. If fields could think, they would doubtless act like animals and men : to show their value they would wish to look well. But to be covered with brush and thickets and gullies and the like is enough to make them shameful and little-doers. AMPLE REWARDS IN RECLAIMING WORN-OUT SOIL Treat these lands liberally and they will brighten up and respond gloriously. For every cent you spend on them in the way of better appearance and clean faces they will return many. Every gullied wrinkle you remove will bring hope and earning power to them, and to you; the care and attention expended in grooming with axe and plow will pro- duce marvelous changes in appearance, productive ability, and commercial value. Possibly you have many acres of this kind of land. If so, reclaim them as you can. Five acres, ten or fifty: work in this fashion as far as you are able. Winter is the time, and there is none better. You are not busy with details of work: your men, your tenants, have many, many idle days; your teams are inactive because winter is on, and no pressing work is to be done. Make work: employ men and teams in these old fields. Cut the thick- ets, mow the briers and brush ; plow the soil deeper GETTING FERTILIZER FROM THE AIR. Growing clover or any other leguminous (nitrogen-gathering) crop in rotation with cotton is the most satisfactory way of keeping up the fertility of cotton lands. CULTIVATING THE CROP. The old ridging system of cotton cultivation is going out of fashion. In the first picture we have the mule and the one-horse plow; in the second the more modern — and more economical — two-horse cultivator. COTTON 117 than you have ever done before. Let the one- horse plow alone. It is useless in these old fields. A larger, heavier one is needed and two horses or mules will be required for the work. If you are able to do this during earlier winter the clay sub- soil turned up will do no harm. Freezing and thawing, air and rain, will get things ready for the crop and no harm will be done. Have you ever done this work ? Have you ever tried it on your old fields ? It may surprise you. It has surprised us. THE COWPEA AS AN ALLY IN SOIL RESTORA- TION You are now ready for the spring to come. Of course you will use the cowpea. It will do the work if any plant in all the world can do it. It will send its roots down deep into the subsoil below; it will put nitrogen into the land, humus will be added; the texture will be improved; the soil will come to life. You may get only a small growth of cowpeas the first year. It will depend on how badly the soil is deteriorated; on how much it is worn out. You can pasture the cowpeas or make them into hay, or leave them to mature and die. Suit your- self in this respect. And now winter comes on again. Go into another field. Clean it up in the same way as you have done the one we have just been consider- ing. And last year's section — you must not forget it. In winter plow it again and put it to peas a second time and then a third time. That makes the field. It lives! it is restored to life. Though weak and tender, still it will go to work bravely and willingly. 118 COTTON Let cotton come; the old field is ready, there is no weariness now; no dragging of feet because famished by hunger or thirst; no sullen soil in which the cotton plant must send its unwelcome roots in search of food; no empty larder from which it is to turn away disappointed, FOUR THINGS TO DO Be reasonable with this soil from this time on. If you over-work it, evil results are sure to follow. Treat it properly and it will grow stronger and better. It will never despair again. These four things you must do : (1) Grow a legume of some kind every year or two (2) Use cotton only in some rotation (3) Plow deep and cultivate thoroughly (4) Keep humus in the soil. Fertilizers usually can be employed to advantage in soil restoration. Much plant food is not avail- able. It is present in the soil, but not in forms that plants can use. Time, tillage and thoroughness only will wake this plant food from its sleep and rest that plants may use it abundantly, and when they have need for it. Until that time phosphorus and potassium may be added to the soil to help the cowpea. Nitrogen is not needed, since the cowpea attracts the bacteria that build nitrogenous store-houses on its roots. This mutual arrangement is especially helpful to the cowpea, since it is a ravenous nitrogen feeder and finds an abundance of nitrogen within reach of mouth and hand. So chemical nitrogen is not needed as a fertilizer for cowpeas. A mix- ture of sixteen hundred pounds of acid phosphate, COTTON 119 and 400 pounds of kainit makes a good combination of which from 150 to 300 pounds may be used per acre. A good growth of cowpeas means the addition of a great deal of humus and nitrogen to the soil. It means the employment of the most economical methods for providing the nitrogenous part of the cotton fertilizer. And not only does it furnish the most costly element of fertilizer; it also furnishes humus which is the back-bone and the life of the soil, CHAPTER XV. COTTON UNIQUE: A SELF-SUPPORTING CROP Cotton, like other plants, gets its food for life and growth from the soil, the water, and the air. Strange as it may seem on first blush, it is from air and from water that all plants are chiefly derived. From the air carbon enters the leaves and there forms the so-called carbonaceous matter of the plant. Cotton lint is pure cellulose, a material made from the carbonic acid of the air. From the air, too, comes a large part of the oxygen which, next to carbon, is the predominant constituent of the dry matter in the cotton plant, as well as in other plants. Other elements found in cotton are hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, calcium, sodium, magnesium, chlorine, iron, aluminum, potassium, phosphorus, and silicon. WHAT IS A FERTILE SOIL? A fertile cotton soil must contain all the elements of plant food in sufficient quantities and in available form to produce productive crops. As a rule, the soil elements are present in sufficient quantities to produce paying crops. Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, however, may be deficient, and if so, must be added through other means, or the crop will manifest its loss by making small growth and (120) COTTON 121 diminutive returns in seed and lint. By a de- ficiency is meant, in this case, an insufficient amount of plant food available for the use of the plants. Really, as we have already seen, there is no such thing as worn-out cotton soils. There are poor cotton soils, unproductive cotton soils, infertile cot- ton soils, but they are so because of improper man- agement; because the humus has been destroyed; shallow plowing has been followed; plant food has been lost or locked up. Tillage and humus — and these alone — unlock the door to this treasure-house of old Mother Earth. The addition of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in chemical forms is only a temporary arrangement to make better crops for the time being. No permanent improvement of the soil will result unless tillage and an abundant amount of humus become the basis of such improvement. Chemical fertilizers are to be used, therefore, as supplementary helps, rather than as primary con- ditions. We are now ready to consider the feeding de- mands of the cotton plant in reference to the forms of plant foocj usually purchased — nitrogen, phos- phorus, and potassium. But first, let us divide the cotton plant into its parts that we may clearly know the relative quan- tities of each. PARTS OF AN AVERAGE COTTON PLANT Part Per cent. Roots 8.80 Lint 10.56 Bolls 14.21 Leaves. , ,20.25 122 COTTON PARTS OF AN AVERAGE COTTON PLANT (Continued) Part Per cent. Seed 23.03 Stems. , 23 . 15 Total 100,00 Elsewhere it has been stated that 190 pounds of cotton lint is the average annual yield per acre. If we use the following table of percentages, therefore, we find that an average crop of cotton contains : 190 pounds lint; 157 pounds roots; 256 pounds bolls; 364 pounds leaves; 414 pounds seed; 416 pounds stems. QUANTITIES OF PLANT FOOD REQUIRED In ascertaining the demands of the cotton plant in respect to nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, we can go to the plant itself for the information . Pro- fessor McBryde has analyzed a great many cotton plants, and from his work the amount of plant food used by each part is readily calculated. In this dis- cussion, the reader must observe that only nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are considered, since they are the only elements purchased in commer- cial forms, the others being usually available in suf- ficient quantities in the soil. These facts are shown in the following table; THE RESCUE OF OLD LANDS. Gradually deepening the seed bed — the pasture ground of the roots — is one of the most effective ways of getting more wealth from cotton. COTTON 123 PARTS AND DEMANDS FOB YIELD OF AVERAGE ACRE Quantity and part Nitro. Phos. Potas. 190 pounds lint 65 19 87 416 pounds of stems 6 08 2 45 5 87 157 pounds of roots . . 1 44 81 201 364 pounds of leaves 11.70 4 33 6 57 256 pounds of bolls 6.51 247 4 64 414 pounds of seed 12.96 5 26 4 84 Total. . 39.34 15.51 24.80 Here we find the average cotton crop of 190 pounds of lint draws from the soil 40 pounds of nitrogen, 16 pounds of phosphorus, and 25 pounds of potas- sium. But stems, roots, leaves, and bolls are re- turned to the soil, and are therefore not really taken from the land at all. Lint and seed are taken away, and are removed from the land. Now what draft is made on the soil ? Let us see, and at the same time compare with corn and wheat on the basis of the average yield of each crop per acre. We have the following facts: Crop Nitro. Phos. Potas. Totals Cotton 190 Ibs. lint . 65 19 87 414 " seed 12 92 5 26 4 84 Total 13.57 5.45 5.71 24.73 Corn 29.4 bus. grain 32.14 12.36 7.06 4000 Ibs. stover 41.60 11.60 56.00 Total.... 73.74 23.96 63.06 160.71 Wheat 13.95 bus. grain 19 75 7 44 5 1 2300 Ibs. straw 13 57 2 76 11 73 Total.... 33.32 10.20 16.83 60.35 124 COTTON COTTON A FAR LESS EXHAUSTIVE THAN CORN OR WHEAT CROP This table shows several interesting things. The most striking fact brought to our attention is this : Of the three great staple crops of America, cotton is by far the least exhaustive. Wheat requires more than twice and corn nearly seven times as much plant food as does cotton. Nor is this all. We will suppose that cotton seed, corn stover and wheat straw are used on the farm, and in the end find their way back to the soil. The plant food they contain will be returned to the land from whence it was taken. We will now find a still greater difference in reference to the demands on the soil made by each crop, as is shown in the table below : Crop Nitro. Phos. Potas. Total 190 Ibs. lint 29.4 bus. corn. . 13. 95 bus. wheat .65 32.14 19.75 .19 12.36 7.44 .87 7.06 5.10 1.71 51.56 32.29 In respect then to the amounts of nitrogen, phos- phorus and potassium required for average acre yields of cotton, wheat and corn in the United States, wheat calls for 19 times as much of these elements as cotton, and corn calls for 30 times as much as cotton. RETURNING COTTONSEED TO THE SOIL ESSEN- TIAL TO ITS PRESERVATION The greatest demand on the soil by the cotton plant is for seed production. For the average COTTON 125 yield 13 pounds of nitrogen, 5 pounds of phosphorus and 6 pounds of potassium are used. If seed are sold, cotton is an exhaustive crop, but still only moderately so. When a rational system of farming is followed so that seed (or its equiv- alent in meal) may be used by live stock on the farm, and returned in manure to the land, cotton becomes the least exhaustive of all field crops. The demands on the soil are slight, indeed, when lint is the only product that goes from the farm. Wise is the farmer who realizes this, and blessed is he whose farming methods recognize this practice. GHAPTER XVI. BUYING FERTILITY FOR THE SOIL The small yield of cotton per acre over the greater part of the Cotton Belt is due to poor management in maintaining fertility, small quantities of home- made manures, sale of cotton seed from the f arm,poor tillage, the limited growing of leguminous crops, an ill-planned tenant system, and the lack of systematic crop rotation in the management of cotton farms. All these factors have contributed to the small re- turns in yield and to the constantly increasing de- mands for commercial fertilizers. Where attention is given to all these details cotton growing becomes at once the most profitable of all kinds of farming in the whole world. The small farm, as well as the large plantation, is ever confronted with new phases of management; the owner is successful in proportion to his ability to meet these new phases and so adjust them to his work that they will conduce to his profit and advantage. The use of commercial fertilizers has assumed gigantic proportions in cotton production and calls for constant discussion. We have mentioned elsewhere that of the four- teen chemical elements demanded by the cotton plant, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are the only ones likely to be deficient in old soils, and, (126) Co/T/ OTTON LINT COTTON. i 1 i i vSca/e D - / - (Courtesy of Gray's Studio.) The diagram at the top shows the relative quantities of nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid required for the production. of an average yield (per acre) of corn, wheat, seed cotton and lint cotton— strikingly illustrating the light draft on soil fertility when cotton seed or their equivalent are returned to the soil. The middle picture shows crimson clover; at the bottom we see cotton cultivation in its final stage. TWO WAYS OF FERTILIZING. A common fertilizer formula is the "8-2-2"; the diagram shows its relative quantities of actual nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash. The second way shows the cheapest and easiest way of getting nitrogen and humus into the land. COTTON 127 hence, must be furnished if satisfactory yields are to be obtained. How to furnish these elements — in what forms; at what time; and in what quantity — are problems, which, like the poor, we have always with us. That fertilizers pay is attested every year on nearly every farm and with most emphatic proofs. That they are often, if not usually, employed without the attention due their importance is also certainly true. The judicious use of fertilizers demands that every farmer make not only a study of sources and relative values, but also a study of his own soil and crop conditions. Fertilizers show their greatest profit where the farmer practices thorough prep- paration of land and careful tillage. Here it is, too, that they can be used in greatest quantities with most economical results. NITROGEN Nitrogen is the most costly element of plant food that we buy, and for this reason its production by means of home-made manures and legumes should be carefully considered. Four-fifths of the atmosphere is made of nitro- gen, but unfortunately this atmospheric nitrogen is in a form not available for plant use. There is a compensating influence, however, in the fact that nitrifying bacteria seek out the leguminous crops, and on their roots store up nitrogen in small tubercles, ready for use by the growing plant. SOURCES OF NITROGEN In commercial forms and factory-mixed ferti- 128 COTTON lizers, we find several materials for supplying nitrogen : Nitrate of Soda or Chili Salt-peter is a white solid which is mined in the rainless districts of South America, especially in Chili and Peru. When prepared for commercial use it contains from 15 J to 16 per cent of nitrogen or 320 pounds to the ton. Nitrate of soda dissolves easily in water, and rapidly distributes itself through the soil where plant roots can make use of it. The plants take their nitrogen from the soil in the form of nitrate, regardless of the source of supply, hence this material is the most immediately available form of plant food found in commercial substances. When used in large quantities there is danger of loss because of the ease with which the material becomes soluble. Sulphate of Ammonia: — This substance con- tains about 20 per cent of nitrogen or 400 pounds to the ton. While quite available it must be changed first into nitrate form before being used by plants. Dried Blood: — Contains from 8 to 12 per cent of nitrogen and 7 to 14 per cent of phosphoric acid, and is the richest substance coming from animal products. Tankage: — A by-product of the slaughtering house, contains from 4 to 8 per cent of nitrogen and 7 to 14 per cent of phosphoric acid. It slowly de- composes in the soil, but is a valuable material for cotton fertilizers. Dried Fish Scrap: — This substance is a by- product of the fish oil and canning factories. It contains both nitrogen and phosphorus, there COTTON 129 being from 6 to 8 per cent of the former and 7 to 9 per cent of the latter. Cotton Seed Meal: — Contains 7 per cent of nitrogen, or 140 pounds to the ton, and is the most important of the vegetable products used in commercial fertilizers. It decays very rapidly but lasts for a considerable length of time. It is much less quickly available than nitrate of soda or sulphate of ammonia, and more promptly available than tankage. PHOSPHORUS Experiments tend to show that phosphorus is the chief element demanded by most cotton soils. As is true of nitrogen, so phosphorus is necessary to the full and complete development of all parts of the plant, but its usual use is in fruit and seed production. Being a mineral substance, a de- ficient supply in the soil can be reinforced only through artificial means. SOURCES OF PHOSPHORUS Phosphatic Rock: — These are mined in North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. They must be ground finely before being used, and even then are slow to decay. Best results are obtained by treating the ground rock with sulphuric acid to make the phosphoric acid available. These materials make up the bulk of the phos- phorus supply in cotton fertilizers. They contain from 12 to 16 per cent of available phosphoric acid. Bone Fertilizers: — Bone was early used as a fertilizer and is still popular today. "Ground 130 COTTON bone," "fine ground bone," "bone dust," "bone meal," "dissolved bone," are terms to indicate the mechanical treatment and physical condition of the fertilizer. Ground bone contains from 2 to 4 per cent of nitrogen, and 20 to 35 per cent of phosphorus ; steamed bone from 1 to 2 per cent of nitrogen and 25 to 30 per cent of phosphorus ; and dissolved bone 2 to 3 per cent of nitrogen and 12 to 14 per cent of available phosphorus. POTASSIUM Potassium, the last of the elements likely to be deficient in the land, seems to be less urgently in demand by the soils of the Cotton Belt than are nitrogen and phosphorus. Its best use is in connection with phosphorus. The principal commercial materials that furnish this element are obtained from potash mines at Strassfurt, Germany. Potassium either in kainit or muriate of potash is rapidly soluble in water and equally available to the cotton plant. Kainit: — This substance is the one most com- monly used as a potassium carrier for cotton. It contains 12J per cent of potassium or 250 pounds to the ton. Muriate of Potash: — This is a purified substance of the potash mines, and is one of the richest materials supplying potassium. It contains fifty per cent of potassium or 1000 pounds to the ton. BUYING COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS Commercial fertilizers make up the bulk of our purchased cotton manures. They are sold under hundreds of names, but are valuable only in pro- portion to the amount of plant food they contain. Of course, one should always be guided in COTTON 131 buying factory mixed goods by the guaranteed analysis and not by any particular name or brand. Nitrogen is usually about three times as costly as phosphorus and potassium. The prices of these elements vary from year to year, but in a general way one can place the commercial value of nitrogen at fifteen cents per pound and phos- phorus and potassium at five cents per pound. In computing relative values of different fertilizers you should bear in mind that 1 per cent means one pound in a hundred, or twenty pounds in a ton. It is also a good plan to base your estimate on the lowest percentage figure, since these more truly represent the true value; the higher ones are usually put there to deceive the purchaser. To show the manner of estimating fertilizers, I will use two brands commonly sold on the market: No. 1. Guaranteed Analysis. Nitrogen 1.60 to 2 per cent. Phosphoric acid 7 to 8 per cent. Potash, 2 to 2.75 per cent. Cost, $30.00 per ton. When these percentages are multiplied by 20 we obtain the number of pounds in a ton, and when further multiplied by the value per pound, we obtain the value on the basis of a ton. This is shown below : Nitrogen 1.60 by 20= 32 Ibs. @15c. =$4.80 Phosphorus 7 by 20=140 Ibs. @ 5c. = 7.00 Potassium 2 by 20= 40 Ibs. @ 5c. = 2.00 Commercial value per ton $13.80 132 COTTON No. 2. Guaranteed Analysis. Nitrogen 2 to 2.75 per cent. Phosphoric Acid 9 to 11 per cent. Potash 2 to 3 per cent. Cost per ton, $28. 00. Let us calculate its value as in the case of No. 1 : Nitrogen 2 by 20 = 40 Ibs. @ 15c. = $6.00 Phosphorus 9 by 20 =180 Ibs. @ 5c. = 9.00 Potassium 2 by 20 = 40 Ibs. @ 5c. = 2.00 Commercial Value per ton $17.00 In purchasing commercial fertilizers your aim should be to obtain the largest amount of plant food at least cost. In the first fertilizer $13.80 worth of plant food would cost you $30.00 while in the second $17.00 worth would cost you but $28 . 00. The difference between commercial value and selling price is due to the cost of manufacture, profits, agent's commissions, etc. With the first this difference is $16.20 while with the second it is but $12.00, — a clear saving of $4.20 per ton, and No. 2 superior to the other in every way, since you secure 8 pounds more of nitrogen and 40 more of phosphorus. You will often find printed on fertilizer bags analyses as follows: Ammonia 2 to 3^ per cent. Available phosphoric acid 8 to 10 per cent. Total phosphoric acid 11 to 14 per cent. Actual potash 10 per cent. Sulphate of potash 18 to 20 per cent. This reduced to its true meaning should read as follows : Nitrogen 1 . 65 Phosphorus 8 Potassium 10. COTTON 133 In most States, however, it is now unlawful — and properly so — for the fertilizer manufacturer to use the "sliding scale" in his printed analysis; only guaranteed minimum figures are allowed. Ammonia is used in fertilizers because it sounds as if a little more nitrogen was used, but values are estimated on basis of nitrogen content. Remember it is nitrogen you are after. Ammonia can be reduced to terms of nitrogen by multiplying by .824. In other words, one pound of ammonia equals . 824 pound nitrogen. CHAPTER XVII. FARM-MADE MANURES! SAVING FERTILITY FOR THE SOIL There is an old saying that runs, " No grass, no cattle, No cattle, no manure, No manure, no grass," which contains so much good sense in a few words that it should become a memory gem in every rural school in the land. And it is especially applicable to cotton growing, for cotton lands need manure even to a greater extent than grass does. Next to tillage and good seed, farm-made manures are the crying needs of the Cotton Belt. These manures will do these things for the soil: (1) Add plant food (2) Unlock stored-up quantities of plant food (3) Increase the humus content (4) Improve the mechanical condition of the land. The importance of these factors in promoting the crop-producing efficiency of soils has been shown in previous chapters, and will be considered here only as they pertain to the production and use of farm-made manures, for we are concerned now with the use of additional plant food in potential and active forms. (134) SOILS AND THEIR IMPROVEMENT. A gullied old field at the bottom; at the top a field which has kept its virgin lertility through proper rotation and the growth of legumes. ] S3 H H e PH .> o 1 si till H | > ? §!• Sl! g M.S O .3 T3 CJ -^ « W 03 fl H -3 COTTON 135 THE FARM A FACTORY FOR FARM-MADE MANURES Naturally every farm produces some manure. But as the factory-farm is ordinarily run, only a small quantity is annually produced. Too little is made to meet the wants of the cotton farm. Something is wrong with the factory management, else more manure would be made. Live-stock increases the efficiency of the factory. We will go further and say that live-stock com- bined with any system of farming will lead not only to permanent improvement of the land but to the highest efficiency in the management of the whole plant as well. This suggests much. It means diversification; it calls for a rotation of crops; it increases the animal stock on the farm; it demands greater skill in management; it means business farming. And with it all, it means manure. What becomes of cotton seed now ? You bury them in the soil for fertilizer, or you sell them ; but how few cotton farmers feed them, and thereby get two profits — one from feeding and one from fer- tilizing! And by neglecting to save one of these profits the Southern farmer annually wastes enough for a King's ransom. Plant food is always disorganized material. Decay must come before plants can feed. Animals on the other hand, can use only organized material. Hence, is it not better to feed cotton seed or their equivalent in meal, and get the feeding value out of them ? After this they may be returned to the soil in the form of manures. By this practice nothing is lost and much is gained. We like to buy fertilizers in the form of feeding stuffs, pass them to the cattle, and from them back to the soil. 136 COTTON They provide a double value for us, and it is only business to take it. The cotton farm should be open to live-stock, then, and the seed or meal produced on the farm should be consumed there by animals raised on the farm. At present the Cotton Belt sends cotton seed meal to all parts of the world, which is just another way of saying it ships away plant food or Cotton Belt soil to all parts of the world. Such a practice leads to soil depletion. It may be followed for a great many years without bringing its full penalty on the heads of those who practice it, but in the end it means death and destruction to the land. YOU CAN MAKE FARM MANURES You are making some home-made manures, but are you doing your best in this respect ? What are your teams doing during the winter months ? To be sure, most of them are idle. But they need no rest. Keep them going the whole winter long, some here, some there, gathering vege- table matter wherever it is to be found. Haul this in and pile it deep under horse and cow, and keep up the work. It is the medicine the cotton soil needs. No tonic will produce a change so quickly; no prescription will so rapidly vitalize and build up the soil system. THE COMPOST PILE You can make a compost pile, if you like. Thousands of farmers believe in it. Thousands do not. It is one of the knotty questions on the farm. Perhaps there are two sides to the question ; COTTON 137 i at least we are willing to admit that there are. Still we prefer a direct application to the field. When you consider the labor necessary for extra hauling and mixing, it is considerable after all. How much better it is to use that labor in the woods, getting and hauling other quantities of leaves and pine straw for the various pens, stalls and yards at the barn. We prefer to haul manure direct to the field and have it mixed in the soil, so its decay can take place there, because as a result of chemical action it will rot the soil as it rots itself. SAVE THE MANURE The American farmer has not yet become skilled in saving manure. He is rather wasteful in most things and especially so with farm manure. Liquid from the stable and yards runs away, be- cause of too little bedding material, is leached away in the rain, and is lost never to be recovered. Again, stables are cleaned, manure is dumped out of window or door, exposed to sun and rain, and gradually burned up or washed into the stream. Do you believe this ? Your own observation will be proof enough. The remedy lies in but one direction : Save home- made manures and make more the following year. If you have no covered barnyard or other covered place to keep it, haul direct to the fields. This offers many advantages: It enables you to keep the stables clean. You can do the hauling in the winter when men and teams have little else to do. The soil itself is benefited by the decay of manures and is inclined to make active its in- soluble plant food. 138 COTTON Where this method is practiced, it combines easily with winter or cover crops like clover or rye, and as plant food is released it is stored in stem, root, and leaf of the growing plant, thus leaving a wealth of plant food and humus in the soil for other crops that come later. GREEN MANURES A green crop plowed under offers another quick way of improving the productive power of the soil. For this work you can use clover, rye, or cow- peas. Glover and cowpeas are preferred, since they add humus abundantly, and at the same time gather atmospheric nitrogen and store it in the soil. CHAPTER XVIII. HOME-MIXING OF COTTON FERTILIZERS : SAVING THE MANUFACTURER'S PROFIT Home-mixing of fertilizers deserves much more attention than it receives. The fact that standard brands may cost from five to fifteen dollars a ton more than the commercial value of the several in- gredients of plant food; the fact that fertilizing materials are standard articles of trade and may be purchased as such; and the fact that the many manu- factured brands are only composed of materials such as the farmer may purchase himself, all suggest the wisdom of farm-mixing rather than factory- mixing. The claim has been constantly advanced, but principally by agents of factory-mixed goods, that home-mixing is not advisable and that the work here cannot be done properly. This claim is altogether untrue, so far as the principle of home- mixing goes. That some fertilizing materials have been mixed hastily and poorly on some farms, we have no doubt: but so has plowing on some farms been poorly done; so have seeds been im- properly selected; and so has culture of the grow- ing crop often been neglected, or the wrong prin- ciples followed. But shall we abandon tillage and seed selection because someone else is thoughtless or because he fails ? Rather, if the principle is cor- (139) 140 COTTON rect, if the practice has proved reasonably success- ful and if it is a money-saving method for the farmer, it should not only be considered carefully, but put into operation as quickly as means may be found. The first step in home-mixing is the selection of the materials to be used. Then these must be brought together, mixed and bagged. Now you can do this work, receive big wages for your labor, and save money besides. Often many farmers join to- gether and make their purchases. A better rate is usually obtained, as the cost for freight is less for a large lot shipped at one time than if several lots are separately billed. WHEN AND HOW TO MIX The winter season is usually the best time for mixing fertilizers, since it enables you to get your materials together and do the work when labor is available and before you get into the rush and hurry of the plowing and planting season. This time is suggested, not because of the great amount of labor involved, or time required, but because it may then be done well without haste or carelessness. To the fertilizing phase of cotton growing you should indeed give the same consideration, in reference to all details, as you give to seed, or labor, or soil preparation. Hence you should take it up, study it carefully, and be ready when the time for action comes. An excellent place to do this fertilizer mixing is a tight barn floor. There are times in winter when this can be given over a few days to this work without greatly interfering with feeding or any of the other uses of the barn. You will, however, COTTON 141 find the wagon box as suitable, and many people prefer it. In mixing, spread the materials over the floor to the depth of five to ten inches, putting the bulk- iest fertilizer first; on top of this, spread layers of the remaining materials ; and then mix thoroughly, shoveling over several times. When a great many tons are to be mixed this operation will need to be repeated often and the material bagged as mixed. In case you find any unmixed material has become hard and lumpy in the sacks, first put it in a sepa- rate pile and break up finely with a maul or shovel. This done, it is ready for the mixing pile to be handled as described above. WHAT KINDS TO USE You will, of course, decide what materials you wish to use, and in doing this you should be gov- erned by the commercial value rather than by the name. The State Experiment Station will assist you in suggesting a formula to use and the materi- als to buy. Here are a few general suggestions it is well to bear in mind in doing the work: 1. Nitrate of soda is immediately available when mixed with the soil. Therefore it should furnish no more than one-third or one-half of the nitrog- enous part of the fertilizer. 2. Sulphate of ammonia is open to the same objection as nitrate of soda, but to a smaller de- gree. 3. Cottonseed meal decays slowly, and at the price for which it can be bought at present, may be used with economy as a nitrogen carrier. 142 COTTON 4. Acid phosphate is usually our most economical carrier of phosphorus. 5. Muriate of potash is an economical carrier of potassium. 6. Kainit, which contains only one-fourth of the quantity of potassium found in muriate, is usually preferred in cotton manures because it is believed to be beneficial in warding off rust. 7. Nitrogen is especially concerned with the growth of leaves and stems. If your cotton leaves and stems have been small, therefore, and the nitrogen supply in the soil has not been increased by the growth of some leguminous crop, it would be well to increase the nitrogen content of the formula you select. On the other hand with marked growth of leaf and stem, the quantity of nitrogen in any formula may be decreased or alto- gether abandoned. 8. When cotton follows clover, cowpeas, or other legumes, little or no nitrogen will be required in the fertilizer. 9. When stem and leaf growth are abundant, but yield of seed and lint below what it should be, phosphorus and potassium — especially the former — are needed. 10. In a general way, on average cotton soils the best results are obtained when nitrogen, phos- phorus, and potassium are combined in the propor- tion of about three or three and one half parts phosphorus, one part nitrogen and one part potassium — unless the nitrogen be already sup- plied by leguminous crops. THE FORMULA TO USE It is impossible to suggest a formula, or even COTTON 143 many formulae, that will meet all conditions of soil and culture. You must work out this problem by personal investigation and experiment if you desire to solve it with any degree of satisfaction. Formulae should differ with different seasons, dif- ferent soils, different farms. Only the general average can be considered here. COMPOST MANURES No. 1. Green Cotton Seed 100 bushels Stable Manure 100 bushels Acid Phosphate 2000 pounds No. 2. Barnyard Manure 1750 pounds Acid Phosphate 200 pounds Kainit 50 pounds 2000 pounds No. 3. Barnyard Manure 1225 pounds Cotton Seed 400 pounds Acid phosphate 300 pounds Kainit 75 pounds 2000 pounds HOME-MADE CHEMICAL MANURES No. 1. Acid phosphate 1100 pounds Cotton Seed Meal 700 pounds Kainit 200 pounds Total 2000 pounds 144 COTTON No. 2. Acid Phosphate 1000 pounds Cotton Seed Meal 600 pounds Nitrate of Soda 100 pounds Kainit 300 pounds Total 2000 pounds No. 3. Acid Phosphate 850 pounds Fish Scrap 700 pounds Kainit 450 pounds Total 2000 pounds THE QUANTITY YOU SHALL USE The quantity of fertilizer to use per acre will depend upon the following conditions: Producing power of the land Preparation that has been given the land Kind of crop grown the previous year Richness of fertilizer Previous treatment of the soil Kind of season. By your own judgment you will have to deter- mine the quantity to use per acre. Learn your soil by careful observation, study and experimenta- tion year after year." All the way from 200 to 1000 pounds of fertilizer are now used per acre. What is best for your soil and conditions lies doubtless within these limits. Try the following plan of questioning your own land, and the answers will be far more valuable to you than any foreign advice : Choose a small area that is reasonably typical of COTTON 145 your land, and which will contain ten rows of any length desired. On rows 1 and 2, use 200 pounds per acre. On rows 3 and 4, use 400 pounds per acre. On rows 5 and 6, use 600 pounds per acre. On rows 7 and 8, use 800 pounds per acre. On rows 9 and 10, use 1000 pounds per acre. In cultivating, treat all soils alike and give each the same treatment as you give the remainder of the field. Carefully observe the plots during the growing season and at picking time estimate yields. The results cannot fail to be helpful in de- ciding what kinds of plant food your land needs and in what quantities each element is needed. WHAT WE MUST DO So much is involved in fertilizing land that each of us will have to study his individual problems year in and year out, that help may come to each of us in knowing how to manage lands and how to maintain their fertility, wisely and judiciously. That we may have a few general principles to guide us along our immediate course, the following general suggestions are offered : 1. Judicious fertilization increases the profitable- ness of cotton farming. 2. Fertilizers wisely used hasten the maturity of the crop. 3. Fertilizers pay best on land in good mechani- cal condition. 4. Fertilizers respond best for cotton when used in connection with leguminous crops. 5. A complete fertilizer pays best on old lands. Where legumes are used or stable manure, the nitrogen content may be decreased or omitted entirely. 146 COTTON 6. When fertilizers are used in small quantities, apply in the drill and mix well with the soil. When 500 to 1000 pounds are used, apply broad- cast or make two applications. 7. Home-mixing of fertilizers is the wisest prac- tice to follow. 8. Adjust the quantities of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium as the soil calls for change due to better tillage or as increased quantities of humus and organic matter are added to the soil. 9. Broadcast barnyard manure on winter-grow- ing crops or compost with cottonseed, acid phos- phate, and kainit. 10. Experiment with your own soil and forget not its teachings. This will help you with every crop that follows. MODERN COTTON MAKING. Breaking the land with three-horse plows, and shallow and level cultivation of a growing crop. CHAPTER XIX. THE COTTON FARMER S EQUIPMENT OF TOOLS It is doubtful if any factor has contributed more to the advancement and progress of Amer- ican agriculture than the improvement of farm im- plements and machinery. When one contem- plates the enormous yields of American corn, wheat, cotton, oats, potatoes and other crops, he is struck with wonder and amazement. What a record our farmers have made! But have you thought of the debt we owe to inventors and to makers of tools and implements, without which these tremendous yields would be impossible ? Unfortunately for him, the cotton farmer has not had such advantages as his brother farmers in the use of labor-saving machines and tools. On far too many farms their use is limited indeed, and often we find only the one-horse plow and the hoe. Cotton farming can never be profitable where this is true. The use of inefficient tools also means an economic policy at variance with the advance- ment and progress of civilization, since it restricts the possibilities of land and labor, and decreases their potential contribution to the human race. But where these old fashioned methods exist, they are now fast giving way to improvements, making the culture of cotton less laborious, less costly, and (147) 148 COTTON the field at the same time more productive, thereby making cotton growing far more remunerative. Cotton farming calls for the same variety of labor-saving tools and devices as does the production of any other kind of crop. As a rule, the principal difference in the equipment of large and small farms is in number of tools, rather than in kind, size, or efficiency. For the information of the reader unacquainted with terms commonly used in the Cotton Belt, let us say that "one-horse farm" or "one-horse farmer" is not meant to express derision of the in- dividual, nor does it refer to social standing. The term means, on the other hand, just what it says : a one-horse farm on which all labor is done by a single animal. The owner may be a one-horse farmer, and at the same time stand high in the com- munity, and have a good store of worldly goods. But the value in land and equipment of a ten-horse farm in cotton production is just ten times that of a one-horse farm. And of what does this equipment consist? Land, feed, stock, tools, implements, etc. Since the one-horse plow is the important implement of the one-horse farm, and since it is so commonly used on both small farms and large plantations, it may be called the typical tool of the Cotton Belt. To be sure, two-horse and even three-horse plows are used; the sub-soil plow occasionally has work to do; the disk harrow, the roller, the cultivator, are now generally known, but the "Dixie" plow is the one tool that in a measure does the work of all these and which finds employment on every farm, regardless of its size or the wealth or standing of its owner. It serves as soil-breaker, soil-pulverizer and cultivator for weed destruction and winter COTTON 149 plowing, and is known in all States and sections where cotton is grown. In spite of the popular favor in which this tool is held, it neither merits it, nor is its use in keeping with the progress now manifest along other lines of cotton culture. THE KIND OF PLOW WE WANT In the first place, the effective plow must so throw the slice ripped from the furrow as to cover all manure, trasn or green crops on the land. To do this it must turn the slice entirely over or set it well on edge. If it does either of these things for you the first aim is achieved. In the second place, the plow should go deep into the ground. This must be done for two reasons : First, deep plowing enables the soil to drink in and hold more water against a day of drought; second, deep plowing gives cotton roots a wider pasture. In the third place, the effective plow must pul- verize the slice it throws out. It is not enough that your plow turn the soil; it must break, fine and mellow it. A plow that does not do these things is a poor plow. Measure your one-horse plows by this standard and you readily see why the greater num- ber of them should be thrown with your pile of scrap iron, and from there carried to the junk shop to be melted and remade into larger and more effective tools. The one-horse plow is sometimes defended on the ground of economy. Really, however, it is not an economical plow. The two-horse walking plow will not only prepare cotton lands better, but will 150 COTTON do as much work as two one-horse plows and thereby save you the labor of one man. Where money is scarce or where labor is also scarce or insufficient, it is always economy to use the best tools on the market. The two-horse walking plow or the two-horse sulky plow ought soon to find a place on even the smallest farms. The disk plow has already been used on some cotton farms. It pulverizes well, and covers in an effec- tive manner, and goes deep into the soil. It is not practicable, however, for use in stony lands. TOOLS FOR COMPLETING THE SEED BED The harrow follows the plow. Commonly this tool is used in connection with the roller to com- plete that pulverization of the soil which has been begun by the plow. And this is necessary. You have observed that the cloddy spots, even in fertile fields, make a poor harvest. In these places bad mechanical condition of the soil forbids it holding moisture, hardens up plant food, and so brings about lack of f ruitf ulness. The harrow and the roller will correct this trouble. A single kind of harrow will not do for all soils nor for all seasons of the year. A fine peg-tooth smoothing harrow should find a place on every cotton farm. It levels the land and disintegrates the larger particles of the soil. You may use it also to advantage in harrowing cotton after planting. The spring-tooth harrow you should have also. It comes in nicely where you have leveling and smoothing to do, or where a heavy rain has com- pacted the surface too much just before planting time. COTTON 151 In addition to these you should have either a disk or cutaway harrow, for crushing and for com- pleting the pulverization begun by the plow. Where clods are left on top of the soil, the wooden drag or roller will be the next implement to use. The wooden drag grinds the clods and lumps, and is also a good implement for leveling purposes. The fertilizer distributor is another economical tool, doing its work evenly and satisfactorily. Following the fertilizer distributor comes the cotton planter, and drops the seed in a continuous chain. While our planter as now used serves its purpose, it is far from being ideal. It must do better work. It is not enough to drop the seed; it must drop the right quantity and in the place where wanted. When this end is achieved, seed will be tested for vitality and germinating power, and the planter regulated for dropping seeds to suit the requirements of each particular soil. This will largely do away with "chopping," now a laborious and costly burden to the cotton farmer. The cultivating tools required in cotton culture serve three purposes: they kill weeds, provide a mulch so as to conserve the moisture in the soil, and release plant food. The old one-shovel plow is fast giving away to the shallow cultivator with several shovels. And the one-horse plow — do you use it for cul- tivating purposes ? Up and down the row it goes, breaking roots, increasing labor bills, lessening profits. Let us again express the hope that im- proved cultivating tools will soon replace it throughout the South. For the early work of cultivating young cotton plants, perhaps no implement is more useful than 152 COTTON the weeder. It runs shallow; its many teeth des- troy or cover all weeds; it thins the cotton; its complete soil-stirring makes a fairly effective mulch. You can use the weeder two or three times in cultivating the cotton crop, and if you do not have it, then use the smoothing harrow. We have many kinds of cultivators : some single, others double; some are shallow-goers while others creep along the surface slightly deeper. All of our improved cultivators are good. Do not hesitate in securing such as are needed, for they will quickly repay their cost in increased returns. And finally, the hoe : is it needed ? Once it was thought that every gentleman needed a sword, then a pistol. We may have use even today for the pistol and sword, but not for every -day clothes. So we have use for the hoe in cotton culture, but not until after the weeder and fine-tooth harrow have done their work. In some fields, some seasons, the hoe may be needed until the perfect planter comes; until cultural methods are more studied; then the hoe may go, with knighthood and chivalry, and be one of the things of memory. CHAPTER XX. CULTURE FROM SEED TO BOLL In the romance of cotton the climax is reached in that scene which has to do with its culture. All that has come before is concerned with stage set- tings properly to introduce the chief actor, and what follows in the disposition of the crop is but the natural conclusion expected before the final curtain falls. In this growing scene the seeds awake from their sleep in the soil, the tiny two- leaved plants peep through their surface screen and come forth into sunlight and growth, now to engage the attention of a vast army of men and women through long months of watchfulness and care. THE BED IS MADE Sometime before planting time the land is "bedded up" as a final preparation for the seed. This custom seems to be almost an universal practice, wherever cotton is grown. While it involves extra time and labor, its warming influence on the soil, especially in cool or wet weather, is sufficiently helpful to modify any objection to the practice. The plan of bedding up is this: the row is opened and in it the manure is placed (or if a fertilizer drill is used, the work is done by a single operation) ; then the plow is run back and forth, (153) 154 COTTON heaping the top soil to the center, which leaves the row two to three inches higher than the soil on either side of and between the rows. In bedding up many people who grow cotton wisely include simple tillage operations as well. It Is not enough to make the bed only; the entire surface of the soil must be plowed and then harrowed and re-harrowed until the ideal seed bed is obtained. Only when this is done are you ready for bedding up the land. A week, perhaps a longer time, now passes before seeds are planted. But what of weeds and grass? Now don't deceive yourself, for they are the ever present enemy of cotton, and unless you wage war early and fiercely, your cotton crop will be sorely troubled, if not permanently injured. Your best weapon for some time on will be a light, fine-tooth harrow or weeder. This will not only destroy millions of weeds and grass seed that are germi- nating and fast gaining foothold at the surface of the soil, but will prove the very tool needed for conserving the moisture in the land. Team labor expended at this time of the year is hand labor saved later on in the season. DISTANCE BETWEEN ROWS AND PLANTS You already know that rich lands require less seed and a fewer number of plants than do thin and infertile soils. Why? Because fertile soils naturally produce heavier and larger cotton stalks, which naturally call for fewer plants to the acre, and greater distance between them in the row. Four feet is the usually accepted distance between rows, although on the lighter kinds of COTTON 155 soil three or three and a half feet are popular distances. The distance between plants in the same row may be safely placed at twenty to twenty-four inches for good soils, and twelve to sixteen inches for poor ones. Where either the variety or the soil tends to make larger cotton stalks, thus re- quiring more space, rows may be widened to five feet and the row space extended to from twenty-four to thirty inches. WHEN TO PLANT Nearly three months are included in the planting limit for the Cotton Belt. Each section has its own extremes. These are influenced by conditions of soil and climate, and consequently vary ma- terially. The table below suggests the commence- ment of planting time : Southern Texas, March 1 Eastern Texas, March 15 Louisiana, . . . .T March 15 Southern Mississippi, March 20 South Carolina Coast, March 25 Mississippi Bottoms, April 1 Middle Texas, April 1 Arkansas, April 5 North Carolina, April 20 South Carolina, April 20 Georgia, April 20 These dates suggest when planting may com- mence, but represent one extreme. The limited variation of every section is sufficient properly to plant the crop. When the ground becomes warm enough to favor germination, and is properly prepared, you may begin your seeding. Earlier 156 COTTON than this, while the ground is cool, or before the season has advanced far enough for the cotton plant to bask in its loved sunshine, the crop will make little progress, even if germination itself is not seriously hindered by the low temperature. Some good farmers prefer to fertilize rather heavily, delay planting, and wait for decidedly warm weather, so as to rush the crop ahead of grass and weeds. If for this or any other reason you should postpone seeding until toward the end of the planting season, however, it will be safer to plant seed somewhat deeper, and if weather is dry, you should roll the land as well. Early maturity of the crop does not depend so much upon time of planting as it does on the early-maturing qualities of the variety. Even with late planting, if you have proper fertilization and good preparation of soil, you will secure better results than where the opposite conditions have prevailed. PUTTING FERTILIZERS INTO THE SOIL When two or three hundred pounds of fertilizers are used, seed may be planted without mixing the fertilizer with the soil. Where more than this amount is used, it seems desirable to apply it in the bed or mix it with the soil by means of the scooter plow. Heavy applications justify a different procedure. If placed in the center furrow, the fertilizer should be incorporated thoroughly with the land. Ex- periments seem to indicate that where as much as a thousand pounds are applied, it is preferable to side list or broadcast at least one-half of the quantity, COTTON 157 using the remaining half in the center furrow. Double doses of fertilizers pay only where con- siderable quantities are used. For the dose as usually given, a single application is sufficient and this is best applied in the bedding-up process. THE FIRST CULTIVATION A few months ago we visited a cotton plantation which had received considerable local mention because of its excellence. About one hundred acres of the plantation were devoted to cotton, and at the time of our visit the crop indicated a yield of nearly two bales to the acre. " When did you begin the culture of this cotton ? " we asked the owner. "Well, sir, I began to cultivate that cotton before it was planted, " he quickly replied. "The crop is certainly a fine one," some one remarked, " and not only that, but I see it is grown on very ordinary land. How do you account for the better appearance of your cotton as compared with all these other fields around here ?" " Simply by good tillage (for I never use a one- horse plow) ; by making use of all vegetable matter I can find in the woods and on the farm; by careful selection of seed; and by careful cultivation throughout the whole growing season, and es- pecially before the crop is planted. " The excellence of the crop truly was manifest. We have heard since that this good farmer had produced even more than his estimate that day — he made a total crop of two hundred and twenty-four bales. His philosophy is in keeping with the facts sug- gested by the study and research of our cotton 158 COTTON investigators. He is successful, of course. He follows modern methods, and reads about and studies his business. AT CHOPPING TIME The imperfect method of planting cotton makes work with the hoe necessary in order to secure a proper stand and correct the excessively large number of plants to the acre. The present-day planter drops seed in a continuous chain, using from ten to fifteen times as many seeds as are needed. To get rid of these extra plants and so to thin them in the row that the desired number only shall be left, calls for the practice of " chopping. " As young cotton plants slowly come out of their beds in the ground and raise their little bodies into air and sunlight, the laborer comes into the field "to chop" the cotton and arrange it in an orderly manner for the growing campaign now before it. As a rule now, all planters chop their cotton, but when a more perfect planter comes this will not be so necessary. A few good farmers, even now are depending less on the hoe and more on the weeder and harrow for this work. Either one or both of these tools when run a couple of times crosswise across the rows do rather effective work in thin- ning the crop; and at the same time the practice warms the soil, mellows the surface, destroys weeds and grass, and puts the land into good physical condition for the growing crop. The first step in cotton culture then is this early work with the weeder, or peg-tooth harrow. It is, in fact, the most important ever made, surpassing in value all subsequent workings. COTTON 159 OTHER STEPS IN COTTON CULTURE While cotton moves slowly during its early stages of growth, when it once takes root firmly — and it always means business if the soil is right and warm and moist — its roots go eagerly into the ground, searching in all directions for plant food and water. While the roots are thus foraging around, growing, spreading, and lengthening, the plant above the ground is not standing still. We grant that at times, especially when the land is not congenial because of poor preparation, coldness, or much rain, cotton plants seemingly hesitate, or at least move but slowly in their upward course. And yet can you blame them ? Do you wonder they move so slowly, — tender and weak as they are with dangers all about them ? Opposed to cold by nature, they suffer. Then, too, greedy weeds and grass continually menace and threaten them throughout the entire season; so unless you care for them while young and tender, and even stay closely by, they lose courage and fail to meet your expectations at harvest time. When plants are about three or four inches in height, the cultivating plow may be started. The hoe may now be laid aside, and the cultivator pressed into service to do what work is left until the maturity of the crop. You will act wisely if you get good tools for cultivating. The modern cultivator with its many shovels does the work well, and cheaply. But the plow — the one-horse plow — is not the tool for the cultivating season ; better leave it under the apple tree or in the stable for the chickens to roost upon than bring it into the cotton field; for it is not a cultivating tool for cotton or for any 160 COTTON other crop where inter-culture is necessary. One objection to the one-horse plow is that it runs down into the soil where the feeding roots are, and there it does positive harm, for it injures some roots, ruins a great number of others, and con- sequently lessens the feeding ability of the plant. But that other phase : that important question of labor! Have you thought how expensive the one- horse plow is as a cultivating tool ? A man and a horse! Up and down the row, once, twice, three times, and even four times, to do work which might be done — and done well — in half the time and with half the labor if a really good cultivating tool were employed. HOW DEEP SHALL WE CULTIVATE? The point in this: Roots serve as supports for the plant and hold it in the soil; they get the mois- ture and food for its growth. All are needed for work. In the life of the plant the surface-feeders have their work to do, work of just as great impor- tance as that done by those which creep down into lower depths, where harm is further removed. But suppose you cultivate deeply, as is the com- mon practice. What then? Just what we have already said — the roots are torn away and the feed- ing ability of the plant is lessened and permanently injured. It follows then that cultivation should be shal- low. One inch or two, just deep enough to do good work, is what we want. If you think you must cultivate more deeply than this, let the work be done in the season while the plants are still young and before their roots have extended out in all directions. COTTON 161 WHERE YOU FIND THE LATERAL ROOTS An examination of cotton roots as they grow in the field will indicate many things helpful during the cultural season, and show how essential it is not to go deep into the soil with the cultivator. The growing habits of cotton roots have been given a good deal of study, and this knowledge ought to be used to advantage in the culture of the crop. In South Carolina, for instance, "it has been observed that most of the lateral roots commenced about three inches below the surface, and never went below the upper nine inches of soil." At the Ala- bama Station similar observations were made. "In a soil of sandy drift and pebbles" a young cot- ton plant three and one-fourth inches high was found having a lateral root over three feet in length, the end of the root being only three inches from the surface. The position of the roots suggested to this experimenter that "the usual deep cultivation would have destroyed four-fifths of the lateral roots which extended at right angles to the row." Many experiments made in respect to inter-cul- ture make out a strong case as to the superiority of shallow over deep cultivation. These tests extend over a period of several years, and have to do with conditions in several States. Only two instances are on record in which shallow culture failed to af- ford a larger yield than deep culture. HOW OFTEN TO CULTIVATE Early culture, if well done, plays havoc with grass and weeds. And since to rid land of these is the first of the reasons why we cultivate, it follows that if they are kept in check early in the season, 162 COTTON less effort and labor later on will be required to com- plete the work. Then culture is given also to break the surface crust that forms after each rain, so as to conserve moisture and blanket the ground with a mulch of fine dry soil. If rains come often, we need to cultivate often; if weeds and grass persist in presenting themselves, then we must keep the cultivator going, in order to disappoint them and prove ourselves masters of the situation. Then too, if dry weather becomes the rule, the cultivator must be kept at work so as to hold the water in the soil as far as possible for growing plants. The best tool for this purpose, as has already been suggested, is a light cultivator with several shovels. If you will use this tool once every week or ten days, going once or twice in every row, you will have little difficulty in keeping cotton free from weeds and grass and in providing suitable cultiva- tion for these other purposes. TOPPING THE PLANTS A practice more widely followed in former years than now is "topping cotton." This operation consists in the removal of a few inches of the ex- treme top of the cotton stalk late in summer. The idea is to check the growth of the leafy upper part of the plant, and thereby favor the fuller develop- ment of the bolls already formed. Tests as to the advantages of topping have been made at a number of places, including several at our Experiment Stations, but fail to indicate any benefit from the practice; in fact, some of these tests have been quite unfavorable to it. In the face of these results and in view of the labor required, COTTON 163 topping is evidently unwise and makes an unjustifi- able increase in the cost of growing the crop. THE LAST CULTIVATION The art of cultivation becomes very gentle and delicate toward the end of the growing season. Many men have caught the spirit of cultivating work for the early stages, but few indeed for the last. This last cultivation is but the final touch of the brush to complete the picture. The top crust only is to be broken; the few straggling weeds that have heretofore escaped are to be caught, and then the work is done. No breaking of roots, no ripping open of soil, no hilling of land, is needed in this gentle, delicate and final cultivation. Rather, every leaf, and root, and every favorable soil influence, must be directed to help the plant in the tremendous effort it is mak- ing to fructify. CULTURE IS POWER TO HELP Finally, it may be said that the work of culture is to furnish assistance to the plant that it may the better do its work. The soil is stiff and hard, so we must open it that roots may enter; plant food is slight, so we must provide additional quantities; land is poor in tex- ture, meaning a poorer water supply, so we must add humus to the land; weeds are hardy, vigorous and greedy feeders on water and food, also in- fringing on the rights of the plant, so we must get rid of them; the soil favors capillarity, losing its moisture in dry weather, so we must cultivate fully 164 COTTON that it may be blanketed in, — all these we do to help the plant in its struggle and its journey toward maturity. YOUNG PLANTS JUST AFTER GERMINATION AS DESTRUCTIVE AS AN INVADING ARMY. The pictures show the boll weevil and bolls blighted by its attacks. The cotton lost any year as a result of its ravages would be enough for a king's ransom. CHAPTER XXI. THE ILLS THAT COTTON IS HEIR TO From our general knowledge of diseases it seems not unnatural that any plant grown to any extent on the same areas year after year, subject to the same treatment, living under the same environ- ments, should in time be attacked by* diseases pe- culiar to itself. Doubtless many of our common plant diseases have been present for considerable periods of time, but have been developed and rec- ognized only with the development and application of science to agriculture. It is reasonable to sup- pose that we have had for sometime many of the maladies that now affect cotton. Doubtless many of these have been recognized by practical occur- rence, but until a pathological study was made they were not definitely described and the range and extent of their ravages not clearly known. It is scarcely correct therefore to say that the common maladies of the cotton plant in the United States are of recent occurrence; rather they have been with us to a greater or less extent for a long time, / but have become more prevalent in recent years, since cotton production has become a more cen- tralized industry and its culture more intensive. It is natural to suppose that where planted spar- (165) 166 COTTON ingly, or grown under some plan involving a con- stant change of crops in which cotton appears only once in four or five years, there would be consider- ably less trouble from disease; for it is only in those cases where a disease gains a foothold that it causes appreciable loss to the cotton farm, and to gain such a foothold permanently cotton must be grown on the same land in fairly quick succession. The same principle of disease as it applies to the cotton plant, or in fact to any plant, applies also in animal life. Texas fever, for instance, affects cattle only where they graze upon the same land year after year and thus give the tick time to put a new generation through the full cycle of changes each season. But if, on the other hand, cattle are withdrawn from the affected territory, and kept from it a year or two, the tick disappears as soon as the process involved in the completion of its life- history is disturbed, and it perishes, leaving the land entirely free from that time on. Perhaps there would be no eradication of the disease were the lands continually grazed without any period of intermission. It is so with our cotton diseases where the crop is grown continually, as cotton usually is. There is no disturbance of the life process involved in the disease and so it comes on year after year, com- pleting its full cycle of development. The treatment of disease in general then should involve preventive methods rather than specific; a wise system of farming that will improve the land and make it stronger — this will mean interference in the development of the disease; this will lessen its ability to do harm, until it perishes altogether for want of necessary surroundings and satisfac- tory environments. COTTON 167 In general the diseases affecting cotton may be divided into three classes : 1. Diseases affecting bolls: Anthracnose Shedding bolls. 2. Diseases affecting roots: Root Gall Root Rot. 3. Diseases affecting leaves or stems or both: Anthracnose Leaf Blight Mildew Damping-off Wilt Mosaic Red Rust Angular Leaf Spot. WHAT THESE DISEASES DO In order to clearly understand these diseases each one will be discussed separately. Anthracnose: — The fungus causing this dis- ease is a well known parasite of the cotton plant in all its stages of growth. It attacks the stems of young seedlings near the ground and produces the disease similar to the well known "sore-shin" or damping-off of the same plant. The cotyle- dons or young seed leaves also are attacked frequently. The same fungus also produces spots on the leaves and on the stems, but it is perhaps best known as the cause of the anthracnose of the boll. When it attacks the bark of the stem, reddish- 168 COTTON brown areas at first are produced, and eventually the bark dies. As a result of this injury the leaves may turn yellow, wilt, and fall from the plant; though, unlike the rust with which these symptoms often are confused, the plant rarely if ever produces another crop of leaves when affected by the anthrac- nose. As a result of the boll anthracnose, very serious losses may result. A boll when attacked by this fungus assumes, particularly on the side exposed to the sun, a bronzy yellow due to the growth of the vegetative threads (mycelium) of the fungus in the walls of the fruit. If the bolls are nearly mature, especially if the weather is not very moist, no very serious damage to the bolls may result, and they may open in a perfectly normal manner. But if the bolls are attacked when young, or if the weather is rather moist, the fungus may cause the boll to open prematurely and expose the lint to rotting. The anthracnose may become epidemic, and cause very great losses. In this way it caused very serious trouble in many parts of Alabama during last season. Under such circumstances the sur-^ face of the bolls often becomes covered with a pinkish coat composed of the spores of the, fungus. At present no remedy is known, but if the ravages of the disease render -such effort necessary, it may be possible to select and develop resistant strains or varieties that will be nearly immune against its attacks. Shedding the Bolls: — This trouble has been long known and is very frequently a serious loss to the cotton farmer. Alternating wet and dry weather is the main trouble. Every farmer has noticed that during a time of excessive wet weather the ground COTTON 169 is literally spotted with bolls that have dropped off. This condition possibly should not be called a dis- ease, but rather a provision of nature to adjust the plants to their environment. When bolls are shed it leaves the plant in a better condition to mature those bolls that are unaffected. It naturally brings up the question, however, as to just where is the nice dividing line between full fruiting and over- fruiting. No treatment for this trouble is suggested further than having the soil in such condition that it may feed the plants so well as to minimize the evils of unfavorable seasons. Root Gall: — This disease is located in the roots, and its primary cause is the nematode worm which lives in the tissue and causes the abnormal growth. It is termed a gall. This worm is white or yellow in color, and very small and threadlike in form. It has been said that each female will lay from one hundred to two hundred eggs, and that there may be seven or eight generations in a year. It is readily seen therefore that their growth and ex- tension is rather rapid. From the very nature of this disease it appears that this worm must get into the soil from affected plants, and hence there is practically no way to combat the trouble other than by a change of crops, and using care that other im- portant areas may not be affected in the same way. As a matter of fact, the direct damage from this root gall is not of so much importance as the in- direct damage, in that the nematode in its injury to the root prepares the way for the. entrance of the wilt fungus into the root system. Hence it is that the two troubles are often round together, and hence it is that many claim that the. wilt came only 170 COTTON after cowpeas were cultivated on the land. In other words the peas introduced the nematode worm, and this in turn caused the cotton plant to be readily attacked by the wilt fungus. And more than this, the most serious attacks of the wilt are found on soils known to be infected with the nematode worms. Root Rot: — Root rot is a fungus which attacks other plants as well as cotton — alfalfa, also apples, peaches, and other trees. The disease spreads in all directions through the soil. The fungus de- rives its nourishment from the living substance of the root, and this naturally uses up the material in the tissues, and they shrink and decay. The life processes in the roots are also checked, and con- sequently they are unable to supply the plant with necessary food and water. As a result the whole plant shrinks, withers and dies. Some one has suggested the application of salt or kerosene to the soil as a means of checking the development of this disease, but as yet the efficacy of this treatment has not been proved, and there is likely little or no value in it. Crop rotation seems to be the only method that will serve in keeping the fungus in check. Specific applications are natural- ly difficult to apply, even if effective. General methods that involve better management and provide a comfortable home for the plant, seem to be the way in which effective treatment or pre- vention must be directed. Crops like corn, millet, wheat, and oats seem not to be affected by this dis- ease, and consequently they can readily be used in a system of rotation that will bring cotton on the same field only once every three or four years. In this way cotton will show the advantage not only of crop rotation, but will improve by reason COTTON 171 of its ability better to survive or resist the fungus. Leaf Blight: — This disease, while very common in cotton is not very serious. It is a fungus that attacks the older leaves of the plants, and such others as have been disturbed in some manner so as to affect nutrition and assimilative power. You will sometimes find this disease associated with other diseases that affect the leaves and have weakened them, thus destroying their power to re- sist disease. The leaf blight is distinguished by the reddish circular and somewhat irregular spots surrounding a rabbit brown or white central area. As yet no remedy has been suggested for this trouble, and likely none will prove satisfactory that does not involve a better adaptation of the plant to its environments. This adaptation will enable the plant in a measure to resist this disease — or any other disease for that matter. Mildew: — This is another fungus disease that affects the parts of the leaf limited by the veinlets. Its area of infection, thus far, has been rather limited and little harm has so far resulted from it. While it may occur in many parts of the Cotton Belt, its damage is small and unimportant. No remedy has been suggested. Damping-ofj: — The terms "sore-shin" and "seed- ling rot" are also applied to this very common dis- ease. It is a fungus attacking the young plant just beneath the surface of the ground. The parts affected assume a shrunken appearance, brownish or reddish in color. The time of attack is in early spring, when the cotton plant is small and delicate. Wet weather aggravates the trouble and from the nature of the disease, perhaps effective remedies cannot be applied. Any soil treatment that may be given so as to fit the plant for its environment, 172 COTTON thus controlling soil conditions, will favorably in- fluence the plant so that it can outgrow the trouble. Liming the soil to improve its mechanical con- dition ; good tillage so as to loosen and aerate the soil; frequent cultivation in the spring so as to dry out the soil, usually after rain, and at the same time warm it up, are the best means of helping the plant when the fungus appears. Wilt: — 'This disease has also been called "french- ing," anc^ftends over a considerable portion of the SoutherjMBotton Belt. The fungus gains entrance through ike roots and thence goes into the wood tissue of me stems. The growth of the fungus in the stems naturally hinders the upward and down- ward movement of the plant solutions, thus inter- fering with the physiological processes of the plant. How the disease works may be readily seen by splitting open the stem: a brownish diseased con- dition will be noticed. Occasionally you find that a greater part of the leaves of the affected plant drop and the plant dies, a new growth probably appearing from the lower part of the stalk. The only remedy lies in securing a variety or breeding a variety that will resist the disease. This is the only direction from which help can come. By going into the field and selecting seed only from plants that have lived through the plague, you can, after awhile, secure plants that will grow on in- fected soil. Mosaic Disease: — The name "yellow blight" is also applied to this disease. It follows as the re- sult of uncongenial conditions of soil and weather, and even of other diseases that seem to sap the strength of the plant. Healthy leaves, or leaves from very healthy plants, are seldom if ever at- COTTON 173 tacked. The first appearance of the disease is a peculiar yellowing of the leaf which assumes a checkered appearance. As it gains ground, the leaf not infrequently curls up and falls. The most effective remedy is to keep the plant in good growing condition. Cultivation is effective, since it warms the soil, dries the upper layer, and provides an effective mulch during seasons of drought; or an addition of vegetable matter, im- proving the physical conditions of the soil and thereby favoring the plant, is an effective help in carrying the plant through the danger, and en- abling it to resist the disease. Red Rust: — The reddening of leaves often noted in parts of cotton fields is the result of attacks by the red spider. As a rule, this trouble is limited in area extent, and it is not a prominent disease. Dry, warm weather favors the increase and growth of the spiders, and hence any treatment that causes vigor and steady growth in the plant is a safe and effective remedy. Angular Leaf Spot: — This disease is largely con- fined to the months of June and July, and while it nowhere appears to any appreciable extent, it is found in a very large territory. It gets its name from the dark angular spots which appear on the leaves. The disease does not extend to all of the leaves, but usually only to those that are older and less active in growth. The spots are watery at first, but in time assume a blackish and then a brownish color. Those plants that are less vigor- ous and therefore constitutionally weak are usually the natural prey of the disease. The selection of strong seed, with careful cultivation, giving a good growing environment for the plant, is suggested as the best means of warding off the malady. 174 COTTON WHAT TREATMENT THESE DISEASES SUGGEST We see from what has been said that the cotton plant falls heir to many kinds of diseases. You naturally look for some treatment that will keep your plants from disease and help them to be strong and healthy. What is the remedy? It lies along one general direction: fitting the plant to its environment. If its atmosphere, its home conditions, and life in general, are good, it will in a large measure resist all diseases. The central thought then is to apply preventive rather than remedial measures. Get your soil deep, and well loosened; fill it with vegetable matter so as to control the warmth and moisture and plant food; rotate your crops so that no dis- ease may gain headway; apply humus fre- quently and constantly to the soil, because humus is the life of the land; and select seed only from strong and vigorous plants, for these will possess endurance. The right treatment of disease lies in these directions. Follow them and neither fungus nor bacteria can destroy your crop; follow them and your reward will be found in a plenteous harvest. CHAPTER XXII. INSECT ENEMIES OF THE COTTON PLANT You have heard about some of the troubles that come to the cotton farmer through the depreda- tions of insects; maybe you have been troubled yourself; if so, you are altogether familiar with trouble of the real and true sort. But you, in those regions where the plague has not yet come, you had better go out to meet the foe, ere he come, rather than delay the battle until the enemy is upon you. For in either case you face a foe of no uncommon kind, determined, aggressive, often defeated, but so undaunted by defeat that it keeps on, usually winning in the end. Such, at least, has been our experience with the Mexican Boll Weevil. Slowly at first it approached, merely selecting a place for camp; but that first camp became really a fort, and in all directions its outrunners have gone, gain- ing in numbers, until to-day their aggressiveness and power threaten the whole Cotton Belt. I. THE MEXICAN COTTON BOLL WEEVIL Monclova, Mexico, produced considerable cot- ton in the early half of the last century; from some- where, in some direction, came the insect of this story. How long it encamped around this little town we do not know, but sometime between 1860 (175) 176 COTTON and 1865 its ravages, gradually increasing, forced the farmers finally to abandon the culture of cotton. Cotton was not grown then for a great many years until it was thought safe to make another effort. But scarcely had operations begun anew before there appeared the ancient foe — hidden up to that time, of course, but where no one knows — and de- stroyed the crop. Twenty years later the insect was noticed at Matamoras, carrying on the same destructive work; but it stopped not here. In ten years it reached the Rio Grande. Checked for a moment, but not baffled, it goes on, continuing in its attempt to cross the river, which it succeeds in doing within a year or two. Once across, more bold now, it makes its campaign with quickness and dispatch, entrenching itself at Brownsville, Texas. Not waiting to subjugate completely the surrounding territory, it hurries on with darting jumps, and within a year it has fastened its hold upon San Diego, Alice and Beeville. This was in 1894. The interior does not stop it; for within a year it goes still further to the North, doing consid- erable damage at Floresville, and reaching even San Antonio. Likewise it pushes to the East and to the Gulf, reaching Victoria, Cuero, and sends its scouts to Wharton also. The last ten years has been a period of entrenchment and invasion to a peculiar degree. Practically all of the cotton- growing territory of Texas is now invaded ; and the weevil has crossed into Louisiana, and has even threatened Indian Territory. Its ravages have been great, and for the last four years the annual amount lost to the cotton growers of Texas has been approximately twenty- five millions of dollars. Including the loss to ginners, manufacturers, and other allied industries, COTTON 177 the total yearly loss to the South through this insect probably amounts to a hundred million dollars. WHAT THE DESPERADO IS LIKE The Mexican Boll Weevil is not a ferocious- looking foe. It is only a small gray beetle, with a reddish-brown snout, and a body scarcely a quarter of an inch in length— the desperado that causes all this trouble and fright. It hardly seems possible that he could strike terror to the hearts of so many thousand people, or that he could attract so much space in the newspapers. As with men, it is not the man but the work done that calls for praise or pun- ishment; so with the boll weevil, it is not the insect (for you have seen scores all about you that look more capable of evil) but his methods of attack, his numbers, that have alarmed the millions of peo- ple dependent upon one of the greatest industries of the world. THE LIFE HISTORY As the life of one man is the history of all men, so is the life of one of these insects the life of all. And clearly to understand him and his destructive work, we must follow the life history through its cycle, for it is during one of the intermediate stages that the greatest trouble is done. Let us take him when his work for the year is over: when his evil deeds for the season are ended, and follow him sufficiently close and far enough for observation purposes, since that is the only way we can fully understand his life. The weevil has done its work for the season. 178 COTTON The cotton crop is ripe and harvested — or what is left of it after the weevil has done his work is harvested. He still stays with the cotton plant un- til late in December, or as long as any portion of the plant is green. Winter approaches now, and a winter home is needed. Where shall he go ? He does not like cold, and thousands and thousands of his fellows perish each year; but there are many places of pro- tection on the average cotton farm; the open bolls, grass and weeds, brush and rubbish; even leaves in the ground furnish a home and warmth. Here he stays with all his fellows, silent and asleep, until spring comes again. The warm days of rejuvena- tion go on. The buds on tree and grass stalk crack and burst in their joy, and perhaps awake the sleeping beetle, which is now attracted by the joyful sounds, and proceeds to take breakfast with the happy hosts. When cotton has grown so large that squares are made, the enemy appears, looking altogether harmless, few in numbers, and exceptionally gay. Soon the female begins to lay eggs . At first her nests are many and she puts but one egg to the square. By and by, as the number of females increases, and the squares become fewer in number, more nests must be found. The boll seems to serve the pur- pose well. But the shell is hard. So much the better; it will be safer there. Wise little mother beetle! she will find a way. And she does, for that snout seems especially built for digging and eating. The opening made, the egg is inserted, and the open- ing closed. Too precious to the little mother is that egg and the life within it for her not to exercise care, that it may not be disturbed or destroyed. She knows in some way, in some manner, and with COTTON 179 some instinct, that the juice of the boll will soon glue the opening shut, and her offspring will be protected and safe. Sometimes two or three eggs are laid in each boll. In just two or three days the egg is hatched, the young larva develops, trans- forms to pupa, and eventually completes its cycle, this time becoming a beetle — the final stage of weevil growth. These beetles join the hosts of other workers, and soon a vast army, scattered here and there, seek new squares and growing bolls, and they too lay their eggs, contributing their share to the new broods, and to the destructive depredations. So then we see that there is a constant succession of generations from the time of the earliest ap- pearance of volunteer plants until the end of the season. This description of affairs readily suggests the tremendous hosts at work, destroy- ing the crop and blasting the hopes of the cotton planter. The greatest enemy of the weevil is frost and cold weather. When these come late in the season the latest broods mature and seek winter quarters, in which they may hibernate during the winter months. Thus a late season is favorable. On the other hand, where frost and cold come early, the last broods are caught and nearly all are killed. The surviving beetles have secured their winter quarters either before, or do so now, and sleep silently until spring's choice days bring them back again to the strenuous life they fill so well. WHERE HELP LIES "Is there no hope of ridding the land of the pest?" ten thousand people ask. 180 COTTON "There is," the scientific people say, "but you must give us time." "And in what way?" "We can tell you, so far, only indefinitely, but several things are being tried," comes back the answer. And many things are being done. Every sug- gestion having merit is considered. Experts from the Department of Agriculture at Washington, Experiment Stations, and private parties, all are exerting themselves to the utmost that this question may be answered, and some practical remedy applied. Some one heard of an ant in Guatemala that is a natural enemy of the Boll Weevil, and parties were at once dispatched to study it and to make friends with this new-found ally. The ant was found and brought to our shores where a hospitable welcome awaited it, but the climate was colder than it was accustomed to, and many of the specimens- died. But some are adapt- ing themselves to their new environment, and in course of time the ant may become indeed a friend and ally to the cotton planter. In the mean- time we must wait and not neglect other ways of ridding the land of the fatal beetle. :< What more can be done, and how can we help ?" the farmer asks. 'You can help in many ways: you can make life miserable to your enemies. See how they use your property — grass, brush, rubbish — for winter quarters: will you permit them to do this ?" And you can disturb them much: old rubbish, grass, and brush you can burn and so destroy thousands; for in destroying their winter quarters you subject them to hardships that in the end will THE ALPHA AND OMEGA OF COTTON MAKING. The picture at the top shows the growth of cotton day by day — at 21 days it is still only a tiny two-leaved plant. Compare with corn. COTTON 181 mean the destruction of many. Hence it follows that all rubbish, including cotton stalks, should be burned as early in the fall as practicable, and the land turned with the plow. Other effective remedies lie in trapping the beetle in the late fall by means of new plants left standing; by enticing with early plants those that escape and live through the winter, and then destroying them; by destroying all volunteer cotton plants — for these are natural feeding places and brooding grounds; by picking summer squares so as to check the summer ravages; and by using early-maturing seed and planting as early as possible. In some of these methods you can now find help; by some of these methods the final battle will be waged and the victory will come to you and your fellows. II. — THE CATERPILLAR OR COTTON WORM This insect has a wider territory for his range, and while he still causes much anxiety and dis- tress, he once ruled with considerable force and power. He looks like a caterpillar : in fact that is what he is. You are thoroughly familiar with his work and that of his class. Eating seems to be his principal occupation. All caterpillars are voracious eaters. Trees are stripped of their leaves; small fruits be- come bare of every vestige of green; cabbages are often entirely destroyed. You are familiar with these. The cotton caterpillar is just as greedy in his cotton field. In appearance you find him a bluish green caterpillar, with small black spots, and often with black stripes down his back. This is the fellow that does the damage. 182 COTTON THE STORY OF HIS LIFE The female lays about 500 eggs, using one or more leaves for places of deposit, and usually the underside of the leaf. Since the moth is a night- flyer, eggs, as a rule, are laid at night. In the summer, these eggs hatch in three or four days, but the time is lengthened somewhat in the earlier and the later seasons of the year. The young larva on hatching from the egg, begins feeding on the leaf, starting with the underside, and biting just a bit of the layer. A little stronger, it travels about, and finally may be seen at any place on the stalk. During the caterpillar's life, the skin is shed five times; at the fifth shedding full growth is reached. It usually takes from one to four weeks to complete this part of its existence. At first the larva is yellow in color, but soon a change is seen and the greenish appearance deepens and becomes permanent, the black along the back coming out prominently, though varying in intensity with different individuals. The larva moves rapidly; in walking it brings its hind prop legs forward to its fore legs, arching its back and be- coming a loop in shape. It eats greedily now, subsisting on leaves principally; but where numbers are many and food consequently scarce, the cotton boll is not spared but also contributes to the bill of fare. And should the vegetation diet become short, there is no hesitation about the stronger members feeding on the feebler and smaller individuals of the race. WHEN MATURITY COMES Many farmers believe that the caterpillar, when COTTON 183 mature, seeks rest in the ground and passes the winter there. I asked one who knows this insect well. "Not so," he answered me. "In fact, the in- sect does not even enter the ground. Nor is the winter passed in the caterpillar stage. The fact is, an imperfect cocoon is made, usually within a folded leaf. Here a nap is taken for a week or two, sometimes even for four weeks. When its sleep is finished, it is not a caterpillar that comes out, but instead a flying moth, rather small in size and of olive green or gray color. This moth is somewhat shy of the day, usually hiding then, but with the coming of the night it takes wings, seeking food, and a nest for its eggs. From now on it is a more active creature. It flies on and on, and seldom returns to its home. In fact, it goes to the North, going from its ancestors' Southern home, and leaves its brood in a new land; these broods in turn, hav- ing a like roving disposition, seek new lands also, until the distance grows so large, it is quite im- possible ever to reach the ancestral home again. This moth wanders even as far to the northward as Canada." The number of generations each season is large. This is readily understood when we consider the fact that in just a few days after leaving the pupa state the moth begins its business of laying eggs. Thus five, six, or even more generations may be produced during a summer — so quite naturally a single individual can populate a territory of con- siderable extent. Later generations of each season, drifting north- ward, are damaged by cold, and seldom, if ever, sur- vive the winter. Hence all generations born outside of Southern climes are lost. New broods coming 184 COTTON from the southern portions of the country along the Gulf each year must furnish the northern popula- tion, and so great is the number, the hosts often do considerable damage to late peaches in Kansas and ruin acres of cantaloupes as far north as Wisconsin. WHERE THE WINTER IS SPENT The moths that go to the north each season never live through the winter; they are too far from home to get back again, and the winter is too severe for them to endure the cold; hence they never see the coming of a new year. It is left to their relatives and their kind that abide in the warmer sections of the most southern portions of the Cotton Belt. Great numbers of these likewise perish. But of course many succeed in finding winter quarters to their liking, through the shelter of rank wire grass, and other vegetation. Ex- ceptionally few of these survive, but their large broods quickly populate all their territory, and the caterpillars are as numerous as the season before. GETTING RID OF THEM The natural way to rid the land of these pests would be to destroy their winter quarters, and they would perish as they do when attacked by like unfavorable conditions elsewhere. This seems im- practicable now, since the undrained territory and waste places of their winter resorts are so extensive. A COMMON REMEDY Where the caterpillar becomes very troublesome, COTTON 185 threatening the crop, some heroic treatment is neces- sary. This seems to be found in the use of Paris green sprinkled on the cotton plant. A rather ingenious method is in vogue for doing this work: two sacks, made of heavy cloth, 10 inches long and 4 inches wide, with both ends sewed, are tacked to the ends of a strip of wood 1 J inches by 2 inches and 5 feet long. The open sides of the bags are tacked to each of the sides of the strip of wood. A hole is now made in the end of the strip, and through this Paris green is poured by means of a funnel, and distributed by riding on horseback between the cotton rows, dusting two rows at a time. A slight jarring of the wood strip will cause the poison to pass through the sacks to the cotton plants below. With such equipment one man and one horse will dust from 15 to 20 acres daily. III. — THE COTTON BOLL WORM You have very likely seen this insect in some of its forms; maybe not in connection with cotton, for it is known in many parts of the world, but per- haps feeding on some plant such as corn, peas, beans, pumpkins, or squash. Its food range does not stop even here, but includes even the tobacco plant, and its fastidious palate often selects many of the garden plants such as the geranium and gladiolus, and even wild plants also. THE CYCLE OF ITS LIFE The egg is usually laid on the underside of the cotton leaf, but is often seen on other parts as well. You will recognize it by its whitish color, although inclined to a yellowish tint, is nearly round in shape, 186 COTTON and quite similar to the cotton worm egg, though a little larger in size. From a couple of days to a week are required for incubation. The larva is somewhat darker than the cotton worm, and assumes the same general appearance in walking. Its first feeding is done near the place where it was hatched ; as it grows in strength (and this it does in a surprisingly short time), it wanders about seeking what is more acceptable to its ap- petite— the cotton boll. It seems that the contents of the cotton boll favor its development, since the boll worm seldom reaches full growth upon a diet of leaves alone. When a boll is at last found, it begins its work by boring into it, feasting upon it, and then abandoning it for another boll. This is kept up day after day. This method of dieting is, of course, very destructive to the crop. Quite a number of bolls may be destroyed by each individual worm. More yet to be said against its spendthrift habits is its constant unreasonableness in attacking premature blooms, which of course prevents them from further de- velopment, and consequently incapacitates them for fructifying. This much must be said in its favor, however; this policy is not wanton de- struction, for it makes food of the stamen and pistils of the blooms in satisfying its greedy appe- tite. Their feeding habits indicate that these insects are not altogether harmonious and agreeable in their pursuits, for the stronger and older ones im- pose constantly on the younger and weaker, even to the extent of eating them when vegetable food is scarce, or not altogether to their liking. As a rule you will find these "big fellows" appropriating the larger and more luscious bolls, and leaving COTTON 187 the smaller bolls and the flower buds to the young and immature worms. After living thus for two or three (and some- times even for four) weeks, the larva reaches its full growth, and now, weary of the world in this form, it seeks some place for rest and change. It finds this in the very soil out of which the plant comes and upon which it is fed. It enters the f round, and out of earth it welds an oval cell, and ere remains from a week to a month. At the end of its pupa life, it appears as a moth, varied in its markings and somewhat stout in body. Its dress is bright in color, shading from a dull yellow to an olive green. An active little creature, we find it darting here and there, but usually seeking the night time for exercise, food and work. Whether it thinks it safer to appear at this time or whether it is some- what ashamed of its deeds, does not appear; still we know it hides among the clover and the grass during the day, and with the approach of darkness comes out of its seclusion to find food and a place to deposit its eggs. Unlike the two insects previously described, the moth seeks sweeter feeding-grounds and more appetizing foods, such as the honey found in the blossoms of the cowpea, the clovers, and other nectar-secreting plants. THE SEASON'S POPULATION A single female deposits something like 500 eggs at a time. The average time occupied in the various changes from the egg to the adult state of the moth is from thirty-five to forty days; and since the first appearance is about the last of April or the first of 188 COTTON May, there is easily time enough for five or six generations in each season. What a population for a single year! Do you wonder that their ravages are so destructive, or their reputation for evil so extensive ? Nor do these pests limit their work to the cotton plant alone; they are just as aggressive in the fields of corn as in the cotton fields. They find pleasant feeding grounds in both tassels and grow- ing ears. When the former have passed their edible state and the latter have become too hard for eating, the moth seeks other feeding grounds, new cotton perhaps, or a later-maturing corn somewhat farther off; maybe a tomato field lies in some other direction: if so, it will be found and appropriated for the use of the new-coming brood. WHEN WINTER COMES As a rule, larvae of the latest broods seek winter homes in the ground and there remain until the warm days of spring rescue them when they issue forth as moths, soon to lay eggs preparatory to another summer's campaign. But this is not the only way the winter months are passed, for adult moths are known to seek shelter in some protected place and hibernate during the cold weather, perhaps only a few, however, in the adult or moth stage. ENEMIES OF THE INSECT Many birds feed constantly on worms. Nat- urally the cotton caterpillar and the cotton boll worm do not escape this provision by which nature seeks to keep them and other insect pests in check. The boll worm is the more favored of these two THE BOLL WEEVIL'S CONQUEST OF TEXAS. The shaded territory shows where the boll weevil is doing the most serious damage. o; s 0 15 8 1 c3 £ 1 £ » * 73 PI 23 1 1 g i 1 1 T3~ 1 c3 j o > 0) j 5 u M o> •^ 5 > ^3 J3 ^ "S TJ •J | 1 ll It 1 o |( ^o o* _ ^ o *l' *.S a 3 •"3 ^ C^ vfi'^ ^ s s >— H C ^CD ^ oj .22 qj > --^ o .30 C3*C tn "S"^*o •11 PH fe'5'o fci-4 a TJ-JS O •« iJ2 3 a ^ 55-g. fa 3c« 1 ? 2 a 2 2 § i— ( CJ CO .•^f*Oco'^ts"OOOi .Wl W) fci-3 ti W) br.^ Wl.^fcf BEFORE THE FACTORY CAME. (A) Girls wind the yarn from spools into skeins, just as our grandmothers used to do 'way down east.