Birmingham age-herald., 1895-02-22
THE COTTON FARM. i.

The question of cotton mills adjacent to the sources of cotton production IS mere evolution of economy now attained to the dignity Of law of commerce. When this condition reaches the public mind in it's adequate meaning there will be certain valuable changes of method of cotton pro- duction and changes of habit of marketing the crop in first hands. The cotton farm is the foundation of Southern supremacy.
 As to improved methods of production, i, wben the farmer finds out that the mill near by will not only gin his crop, but will gin it to preserve the staple in it's entirety, instead of cutting it into two or more fractional parts, as the steam ginneries and the congresses now do, the first great re- form will appear in the improved length of staple. Already we have relatively long staple upland varieties, which command much better prices than the ordinary np- land cotton. The mill near the field will take care that the produces rsceivts full el- couragement for his time, thought and toll in offering for sale heightened staple. The importance of this feature is forcibly illus trated in the fact that American cottons are able to defy the existing outrages of the gin and the compress and take their rank in the markets of the world without a suc- cessful rival.
 When the mill comes the farmer will see that Macadam roads put him in easy com- municatiou with railroads or with the mill direct. An iron axle wagon and team of four good horses can take long sacks of seed cotton to market, having an aggregate weight in the seed of three or four 500- pound bales, such as we now put up, say 6,G00 pounds. The value of this load in cash would justify a haul by wagon of twenty miles. The return trip would carry to the farm the seed manufactured at the mill into meal, or cake, and ashes or hulls, for stock feed and fertilizer. The oil not required for domestic use at home would belong to the general market.
 In this normal development, too long and strangely restrained by politics, by prejudice, by limidity all around, by an tagonisms of self-interest h other and dis tant quarters, we shall see the acute farmer become vendor of cotton textiles instead, as at present, of lint cotton. As the trans- action is now conducted the cotton farmer sells to a broker of lint in bales. The broker be will deal with in the profitable future will be the broker of textiles. He will sell textiles netting, at the lowest, 8 cents, where the lint nets l cent, with a margin of 20 or more, where the lint nets 1.
 In the economies of civilized life three features comprise all. Man progresses from raw diet to cookery; next from naked- ness to raiment; lastly from the nomadic life 10 life in houses. Under the test of each and all of these basal elements of a limitless civilization the cotton States of the United States stand without rival. No country can produce so surely and abun- dantly, and in so great variety, the best fruits of the earth for diet of man. Cotton is the fabric which clothes the world, and we have practical monopoly of produc- tion, and can. if we will, manufacture it cheaper and in higher form than any other people. When we come to houses to live in Bibb county, Talladega and Shelby, Alabama, can furnish marble and stone, timber and brick, while other counties sup- ply timber without limit, leaving the great granite supply of Georgia and the marble of Tennessee unnoticed.