The morning call., 1890-05-19
COTTON IN CALIFORNIA.

A South Carolina planter, in SUNDAYS
CALL, recommends the cultivation of cot
ton in this State, and advises that expert
mental plantations be established and
worked at State expense. BE is evidently
unaware that the experiment was made
long ago. Cotton has been grown in this
State in small quantities for many years.
There has probably been no year in the last
twenty that some one, in some county, has
not cultivated cotton patch, nor is there
any county in the valley in which the plant
has not had chance of growing. Califor-
mans have all along been perfectly well
aware of the profit to be derived from cotton
planting.
The trouble with the industry in this
State has not arisen from want of suitable
soil or climate, but from the cost of labor.
So long as the standard grade-middling
uplands-sells at or about 10R cents
pound in the great distributing markets it
can only be grown where labor is cheap. 1t
is good days work to pick $50 pounds of
cotton from dawn to shutdown. Thus, the
only countries which produce cotton in
large quantities are the Southern States of
the Union, Egypt, India and China, in all of
which farm labor is low in price. In the
two last named countries the field hand gets
less for weeks work than a field hand re-
ceives for days labor in this country. In
Egypt the fellahs work under a system Of
semi-compulsOry labor. In the Southern
States labor of field hands in the cotton
fields Is much cheaper than for labor in the
North and West, and the proportion of cot
ton which is raised by the eX-sIaves for
their own account or on joint account with
the owners of the soil increases daily. In
this Stale, IN the counties where grape and
fruit planting is increasing. laborers are
asking 81 % and 81 80 day with board.
Hence, cotton grown in those localities
costs the grower so much that it cannot
compete with cotton brought by rail from
New Orleans.
1t is pretty safe rule to follow to do the
thing which we can do better than others.
There are probably lawyers and doctors
who could make pair of boots ii they were
driven to it, but the boots would be poor of
their kind and they would cost a lot of
money. So it is possible to grow pine
apples in Alaska and strawberries on the
sea beach, but tie fruit would compare I'M
fayorably with the produce of the spot
where it is indigenous, and it would be ter
ribly expensive. There are fruits and other
products of the earth which we can raise in
this State better than they can be grown
anywhere else in the world. Perhaps we
had better confue our energies to growing
these comestlbles and improving their quail
lty. There are SO many of them that an
agriculture which embraced them all would
be diversified enough to suit any taste.
The first instinct of the landowner is to
raise that which he can raise the most
easily. Thus the fir st farmers were herds
men and shepherd DIS. Cultivation of the
soil with plow and hoe came next, and
the cultlvatOr planted the seed which would
yield the largest and suIest crop. Pres
emily comparison of returns led to the
cultivation Of crops which, though they in
Yolyed more eXertiOn, commanded high
prices, III preference to those which could
be raised with less labor but sold for less
money. Thus the wheat and barley grower
gradually stops sewing his fields for crop
which barely gives him So a year per acre
and devotes them TO raising fruit, which
gives him in a good year $50 or 500 per
acre. The last stage of progress is the
adoption of high farming, as applied to
fruit-the production of small crops, with
much labor and care, in preference to large
crops, with less labor and less money yield
per acre. The farmers of this State have
been through all the initial stages. and are
now entering upon the final stage, where
perfection in the product is the obie tive
point They are not likely to be diverted
from that objective by wild dreams of add
ing right away California to the list of cot
ton States.