Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1897-12-11
FACTS FOR COTTON GROWERS.
The Difference Between the Market Price
and the Future of Cotton.

The Difference Between the Market Price
and the Future of Cotton.
To the Editor Of The Journal:
The convention of cotton growers,
to assemble in Atlanta and Memphis
at an early day, evince that the farm
ers know of the serious nature of the
problem which confronts them.
wish to offer a few suggestions as
to the remedies to be considered.
The price received by the planters,
as compared to that in New York, is
revealed by the following tables, pre-
pared by Mr.. Plunkett, bank presi-
dent, of Lynchburg, Va:
In 1894, planters average price, 40
cents; New York, highest price, st.
In 1895, planters average price, 1853;
New York, highest price, 81.
In 1896, planters average price, 6.6;
New York, highest price, 81.
In 1897, planters average price, 4.6;
New York, highest price, st.
The above table of prices explain
how dealing in Cultures" affects the
price of cotton, pauperizes the land
holders and producers and destroys the
law of supply and demand 50 far as
the price of raw cotton is concerned.
For 20 years the only money made in
raw cotton has been made by the
gamblers of the cotton exchanges and
the commission men. The producers
have made nothing. If all the &C
counts of all the producers could be
audited for that time, it would prove
this statement. Meanwhile most of
these men never saw cotton plant.
The remedy is simple; but it will
take Herculean and united effort upon
the part of all southern and right
thinking congressman to apply it. 1t
is, in brief, to abolish by legal enact.
ment all dealings in "future contracts"
as to all agricultural products.
1t is safer today to buy 100 bales of
futures" than to raise 100 bales on
our farms and plantations.
Cotton is a dethroned monarch. We,
as a people interested in cotton pro-
duction, are practically poems. Evad-
ing the law as to the tax on state
banks is remarkable act on the part
of a state legislature; but it lends
force to the charge that we live under
commercial vassalage that is nothing
less than despotic. Yet even that law
is puerile in Importance compared to
the suppression of this great evil which
holds down the vast majority of our
people in apparently hopeless ruin.
The second subject for the consider
alton of these two conventions, is the
effort on the part of our great COM
mercial rivals, England, France and
Germany, to depress the price of cotton
80 as to make its manufacture rela-
lively cheaper. The trainers of the
Confederate constitution foresaw this
danger and guarded against it by pro-
viding for an export duty. When we
were forced back into the Union we
became subject to the United States
constitution again, and that constitu-
ton prohibits all export duties. His
tory will yet show that commercial
vassalage to the north and east had as
much, or more, to do with secession
than slavery did. The only practical
remedy for this foreign control of the
price of cotton is to spin it into
yarns and cloth before it is shipped.
This may be done to much larger
extent than it has been done, if our
farmers will unite upon some form Of
cooperation, like that adopted during
our war, when every man voluntarily
aided the government by contributing
one-tenth of all he produced on his
farm. If they will do the same for