The Daily Texarkanian., 1894-03-20
FUTURE OF COTTON.
The King of Southern Agricultural
Products Bowed to the Storm,

] l(A NNSNOANNA ~ OOuNhNAh II SiANNA HA A9N
and well up on agricultural condi
tions, products, etc, has this say o.
the future of cotton and cottor
growing as the chief of Southern
agricultural products
"A point has been reached in the
production, and consequently in the
price, of cotton when it is absolute
ly obligatory upon all who are di
rectly interested either in produc
ing or selling cotton, or, indeed, i
merely collatterly interested, tC
give the whole subject their most
careful thought and to adopt a sys
tenn essentially different from that
which has obtained for the last
thirty years. There are two conclus
ions, which every thoughtful mar
in the South must inevitably have
reached long before this; that the
growing of maximum crops of cot.
ton and minimum crops of foodstuffs
do not make the country prosper.
Gus, and that the commercial sue.
cess of the cities and towns can not
be maintained without a reasonable
prosperity in the country. We be-
lieve that it has taken a long time
for the average merchant to learn
this, and it seems, indeed, to have
taken equally as long for the aver
age cotton grower to fully realize
it; but the truth seems to have
struck in at last, and there are few
people in this or any other portion
of the cotton growing country who
do not now recognize the fact that
the process which reduces the til
lers of the soil to poverty will nee
essary bankrupt every commercial
interest involved with them.
''The South is cotton-sick. For
the last four years the price of this
staple has been so low that it was a
rare exception where it has not sold
for less than the cost of produc-
ton, For this to go on is quick
and certain ruin to those who grow
cotton, and almost as quick and
equally as certain ruin to those
whose business is only indirectly af-
feCted. What is to be the remedy? =?
If cotton growing we're an in
dustry as readily controlled as the
refining of sugar or manufacture
of steel rails or cotton seed oil there
would have long since been in ex-
istence a cotton growers trust
which would have put such a limit
to the acreage of cotton as would
have shortened the crop to figures
that would have insured a fair price
for it. We do not doubt that if the
production of cotton we're wholly
under the control of the business
men, some sort of concerted action
would have cut the supply down to
a point at which prices would have
been profitable,
"But it has not been within the
control of business men directly,
and it has been stated of that un-
known quantity, the average far
mer," that the more he resolves to
plant less cotton as an aggregate,
the more he proceeds to plant as an
individual, and the apparent con-
cert of effort to reduce the acreage
of cotton has therefore resulted
generally in an increased acreage
and product.
Heretofore it has been hard for
farmers and planters to grow their
supplies, because the commercial
system fostered the largest possible
production of cotton; now let the
commercial system encourage
bread and meat raising instead.
Let the farmer be induced as an
individual to give up all cotton, no
matter what his neighbors may do,
and he will soon learn that even 25
cents a pound for all cotton could
not give him such real prosperity as
full corn crib and smoke-house,
and a reasonable crop of cotton as
a surplus"
This is the identical position we
have taken on the cotton raising
question as applied to our local far
mers of Miller and Bowie counties,
and the same conditions that gov
ern its production throughout the
Southern or cotton growing states,
apply with equal force and truth to
purely local production. The futile
hope for decreased acreage has
been abandoned and there now re.
mains but one solution and that is
elimination by substitution IL
other words decrease the production
of cotton by Il corresponding in
crease in the growth andproductior
of food products.
This is a great and important
truth, plainly and simply told, vii
! o,,,. 6, ,.y,i,,e- f,.ianJa of both Milla,