The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1900-10-31
"They are Obliged to Have It.0

There is q common idea, sometimes
emphasized by newspapers, and some
times 10y sp~ell-binding politicians that
the world could not get along u day
without our cotton crop. They are
obliged to have it, $50 ling the changes.
There is a good deal in the idea and it
has it's significance. The great middle
West States of Kentucky, Ohio, Iowa,
Kansas, Missouri and Illinois produce
an immense surplus Of meat supplies,
and horses and mules for the city popu-
lations OF this country and the pro-
ducers naturally conclude that the
market will be ~brash-the world can't
subsist without this surplus product.
Minnesota, the Dakotas and other
trans Mississippi States with virgin
prairie soil produce q surplus Of 500
that the crop is short in Russia, and
the world cannot get along without
this surplus. We Of the South, have
ciphered 1t out that India, Egypt,
Brazil and our W cotton States com
bined raise IA million bales and we
naturally argue that the world must
have that much or go to the bow-wows
they are obliged to have t." A
splendid Laurens woman from ten
miles IN the country, the wife of a
leading farmer, was in q store in this
city last week. She has four married
daughters, who are young house-keep-
ers. The lady asked TO see towels and
doylies, and OF each took twelve dozen,
remhrk!ng that she was buying for her
daughters h were eCOnomiZing, but
the good mother regarded their COM
fort and spent a half bale of ten cents
cotton. Bus 1t is very clear that the
young housekeepers were not "ob-
liged to have" these articles of COM
rNxNn dom. 10 tre~ E, 49,
learned and will continue to learn the
lesson that snpp'y and demand are
relative and when the supply is short
prices are stimulated and the demand
sharp. But intelligent farmers know
that the world got along six thousand
years without a lock OF cotton. We are
in round numbers spinning three mil
lion bales in the United States and the
other eleven million bales are made
into cloth in Europe, mostly in Erg-
land. A half million poor people are
spinners and the rich own the mills,
and distribute the product through
the world. These rich people want our
cotton very much, because they ''want
their wheels to go round,' but they
are able to wait and can shut down
for two-thirds or half the time, gov.
erned largely by the interest Of the
poor ~spinners, who else must seek
other aVOcatlons. We have written
what we have written to illustrate
thbt cotton, or rice, or tobacco, or
wheat, or corn or bacon or any other
important article in our civiliz alton Is
not necessarily King. Five years ago
n youngster at Chicago, who had q
millionaire father undertook to corner
wheat and did get a big share of the
crop and pushed the price away up,
and the farmers commenced to pour
in by the million and the price went
Town, down, down, and the father had
to stand to the boy to the tune of six
or seven million. We have had good
prices for n short crop of cotton this
season, but the fact should not turn
our heads. We have a good soil and
climate for all the cereals and for
grasses, and we should have when
August again comes around full grana-
ries, barns, cribs and smoke houses
ard handsome colts and cattle for the
Gray Court and Laurens Fairs. And
then the State has furnished us with a
splendid College at Clemson, with able
Professors and experimental stations
to encourage u great Agricultural
communities to be self-sustaining. In
the meanwhile, we should gov our
great money staple, but we are not to
conclude hat the world wants twenty
million bales and is "obliged to have
It,"