The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1891-09-05
FARMER AND PLANTER.
IS COTTON STILL KING ?


The low price of cotton and the gen.
eral dizziness of the market has raised
the suspicion in the minds of the aver
age cotton planter as to whether he
really possessed the monopoly SO long
accorded him, or had it gradually and
nnnoticed slipped from his grasp. and
had other countries and people taken up
Its cultivation and supplied markets
which were once all his own. Cotton is,
or can be, cultivated to the fortieth
parallel of latitude on either side of the
equator around the globe. That the
American possesses, or ever did possess,
a monopoly of its production was due
to causes not incident to soil, climate
or location. Other nations, and many
nations, can produce it quite as
well, and have, for genera
ton, made efforts to do SO. Our
civil war gave an impetus to its
production everywhere that it could be
grown. The English, who felt more
keenly than any other nation the loss
OF the American crop, melted and as
sisted their colonists in every quarter
Of the globe to enter on its cultivation,
for they were determined, if possible,
to be no longer dependent on the Amer
lean crop In 1858 a pound of cotton
would buy five pounds of coffee in Lon
don. The vast coffee plantations of
Borneo and Ceylon, and to some extent
those of Sumatra and Java, were sacri-
feed to make room for cotton. The
French urged it's production on their
colonists In Tonquin, and the English
sent seed everywhere that it was
thought it was possible to produce it..
In doing this they made curious mis-
take that, no doubt, had much to do to
prevent its becoming "a permanent and
successful industry in many places well
suited to its production. Having con-
troll of the Egyptian crop. which is
the finest cotton in the world,
they sent the Egyptian seed to
every nook and corner of the world
where it was possible for cotton to
grow. But the Egyptian cotton is a
Sea island cotton, and has been grown
on low river bottoms with abundant
irrigation in a contracted section of the
country. BY the same people and proc
esses and under the same climatic infiu-
ences and changes. for period of more
than three thousand years, it has never
been acclimated elsewhere; and placing
it in the hands of ignorant people who
had never seen cotton grown, il was
hardly possible that they would succeed
in its cultivation. No great agricultur-
al enterprise was probably ever frus-
trated by so curious a mistake.
1t is, however, the opinion of well-in-
formed men, that had the war contin-
ned three years longer, it's cultivation
would have got foothold in SO many
different places and among so many
different people that itwould have been
difficnlt for the American planter to
ever again produce or control the crop.
But the war came to an end, and
Johnnie came marching home again.
but when he looked out upon his de-
serted fields, overgrown with weeds
briars, his labor demorallzed and his
plantation a wreck, there seemed to
rise up before his misty vision mon
grel procession of Hottentots and Hin
docs, of Beers and Chinese, of Sou
denese and Fellah, of New Zealander
and Tonquinese. of Gascars, Zanzabars
and Arab. each with cotton stalk in
his hand and bearing aloft banner in
scribed. Its Our Crop and as it dis
appeared he quietly pulled off his ragged
gray coat, and jumped in the air and
cracked his heels together and gave a
shout that was heard around the world
as he cried: ''We'll see about that"
And then John and Polly, Dave and
Betsey, little Pete and old man Tommy,
seized their hoes and marched to the
fields; and they plowed and they
hoed, they planted and cultivated.
Ragged they were, and barefoot,
and. no doubt, often hungry,
with hearts made heavy at the thought
of new-made graves; but they steadily
labored through summers heat and
autumn's frost till the crop was gath
cred, when magnificent price awaited
him. And this SO delighted and en-
couraged him that the next year he
doubled the crop; and his zeal to get
back his own has never deserted him;
no argument that he was producing
more than the world required, or that
production has for moment deferred
him. The vision of the heather trying
to steal away his birthright, at times
rises up before him; and with zeal
worthy of any cause, and an energy
that is never discouraged or defeated,
he plows and plants, and cnltivates
and gathers, determined to round out
the century with ten million bales,
without regard to prices or demand.
When we produced six million bales
the world gave us ten cents for it;
when we increased the crop to seven
million, they dropped the price to nine
cents. and it took no more money to buy
it. Now we ave produced eight million
bales, the same sum, at eight cents,
will pay for it. And in '95, when we
pass the nine million mark, the same
money at seven cents, will pay for it,
And when, in the centennial procession,
"a ~