The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1880-08-22

country from abroad is cotton. The main
item which keeps IL here is corn. If we
have full crop of each, then the
merchant has tangible, undoub ed basis
upon which to make rational calculations
for the future. During the past season Dali
lisa handled and sold nearly 100000 worth
Of cotton. This money was drawn by our
banks from New YORK and England, and
paid to planters Of this and adjoining coun-
ties, who paid it back to Dallas and to coun-
try merchants directly and indirectly, and
they in turn sent it north to buy goods.
Thus does the currency of the country flow
round and round. Taking cotton and corn
as the only real or leading factors
in our mercantile problem, it becomes nee
essary to due inquiry make into the actual
condition and future prospects of these crops.
As to corn it may be dismissed with the sin
gle remark that the crop is made and is the
finest ever grown in the soil of north Texas.
There will be no necessity for the Imports
zion of a single. bushel during the balance of
this and the whole of next year. And this
may be said with equal truth of
oats, barley, rye and hay-the
farmers who planted having made excellent
crops of all, and where individuals are lack.
ing in supplies they can readily obtain them
from their neighbors. We therefore will
have no money to pay out to Kansas and
Missouri next summer, rs we have all this
year, for these articles Of prime NJ cessity.
And, of course, what will be saved in this
respect will be kept on hand for general
purposes, mostly to be expended in stores
for different articles. But fancy family
-four we have not, nor have we the wheat TO
make it. Either the wheat or the
-four will have to be purchased outside,
and that will be drain, though net very
great one, upon our revenues. In the hog
product we have its foundation to make
enough almost, if not quite, to do US, and
that is corn. As usual we will not do So.
The trade in heavy sides may considerably
diminish after the killing season, but that
in Clancy" hams and fancy" lard
buckets and cans with the grease pressed
out will not. In this there will be another
small and continuous drain, for that which
we should produce, every pound.
The crop which must be watched
moro closely than all the rest
is cotton. Without that we have
no article Of export in general way. In
one way and another cotton puts money into
the pockets of every one. 1t is the very
pendulum of our whole machine, so to speak.
There are other resources, but they amount
to triae in the great sum. Stop cotton and
you would stop almost everything. This
and other towns would quickly be abandoned
and 60 to decay. 1t would be to trade as the
effect upon life of the extraction of oxygen
from air or hydrogen from water. 1t there
fore behooves the merchant intending to
risk his capital and perhaps strain his credit
upon the assumption that full crop of cot
ton is going to be marketed to examine its
real situation well and most critically. There
are boil worms reported in every direction
and some of the most respectable planters
who trade in Dallas insist at least half their
bolls have already been destroyed with this
fatal enemy still at work night and day.
Others report two.thirds gone, while third
class say they have not yet been injured
to either of these cItents. To
arrive at the exact truth Of the
situation and to make correct
estimate of the damage already sustained
and will be in the future, is the business of
the merchant, and serious and imperative.
Would it not be prudent indeed, under the
circumstances, to go slow, to wait and see
what will be the result before becoming in
volved upon contingency which he thought
solved, but is still contingency?