The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-06-07
suLLY TELLS WHAT
 PROMPTED HIS COUP.
Saw Evidences of . Reduced Crop While Riding in . Valley Train
 Ev, Route fo Kennhis

En Route to Memphis.
 New York Special to N. o. Picayune.
 How Daniel J. Suily carried to success
 a great coup in cotton that has made
 fortune for himself and fortunes for
 scores of his friends, he told to a re-
 porter in his apartments in the Martin
 ique, in West Twenty-third Street. last
 evening. Lighting perfecto and lollins
 back in an easy chair. he began:
 T have been in the cotton business as
 broker, Buying and selling cotton for
 the mills. for the last nineteen years. ]
 usually made two trips South each year, going down in October and February. It was while was on one of these trips. in February, 1899, that the idea came to me which led me to take the attitude
 assumed in the market during the re. cent movements in cotton.
 T vas riding along the Yaxoo and Mis-
 sissippi Railroad on my way to Memphis.
 There had been a very bad sterm through out the cotton belt that winter. and it had been followed by freezing weather. As passed along the cotton plantations on the railroad journei I saw great quan- titles of cotton seed lying out in the fields exposed to this freezing weather The thought Instantly ran through my mind-what effect will this cold weather have on that seed It was just . pass- ing thought at first, but later on I gave it pretty serious consideration.
 T knew that the outside layer of the seed must certainly be frozen, and that the life in the heart of the seed could not be affected by the frozen layer. Long experience taught me also that the farm CTS would not take the trouble to pick out the frozen seed, but that ust as it lay on the fields and in the pens they would sow 1t. This could not help but cause deterioration in the crop.
 This train of thought suggested other features of the cotton situation that had impressed me. You may not know N but it is fact that the ordinary cotton planter in the South raises only from ten to fifteen bales of cotton a year This Is taken over by the storekeeper, who has advanced him food and supplies for himself and family during the year.
 'The farmer seldom has money, and the storekeeper carries him along until picking time on the condition that the farmers gives him his lint cotton. Now, the first chance that the cotton farmer mas Of getting any money Is to sell his seed. which he takes to the cottof, oil mills that have sprung up all over the South. Naturally. the first thing that the farmer does before he bales his cotton and takes 1t to the storekeeper is to take his seed to the oil mill and realize some cash.
 ITO such an extent has the demand for cotton seed increased that while four years ago the manufacturers of cotton oil products paid SIS ton for seed, they now pay S22 6 ton. This makes it an inducement for the farmer to take the seed from the first picking of his crop to the oil mill and sell it instead of re- planting 1t.
 The first picking Is always the best The lint is the strongest and the seed is the most virile Where does this seed go? Not into the pens of the farmer for the next seasons crop. but into the crushers for the cotton oil mills Tn their the cotton farmers are practically selling the goose which lays for them the golden eggs. The careful farmer of the North takes especial pains to pick out for his seed the strongest and best looking specimens of the previous years growth, so that he is constantly improving year by year upon the past. Not so in recent years has been the GUS tom of the cotton growers. To the mills they give their best, and then they do not take proper care with the balance
 "The farmer will save the second pick ing for seed, and does not reflect that he is sapping the strength of his cotton product in doing this. Before the advent of the cotton oil mill there was no use for the seed. The farmer would take the best of 1t for replanting and would put the rest on the ground for fertiiixing purposes. The cotton farmer today doesn't do that. And, remember, this sort of thing has been ging on for fifteen yeas
 Tn line with this reasoning was the probability that owing to a surplus pro- duction of cotton in 1899. there would be a reduced acreage the following year. And there was. In 1899 there were a5,- O0O, 900 acres planted to cotton in the South, and in the following year the acreage was 2o,ooo.oO0. a reduction of just one-fifth.
 T may be absolutely wrong, but the cotton situation is of serious enough i'm port today to demand most exhaustiv Unless the present neglect full conditions are remedied we shall see cotton selling on a much higher plane than it has this year. Cotton has simply got to reach a higher plane.
 Here's one more feature of the situa- ton. You ask the cotton manufacturer what production he gets from cotton to- day and he will tell you that the pro- ducing power is from 10 t@ IS per cent less than 1t formerly was.
 So deteriorated has the cotton of our great South become under the neglect of the. farmers that the manufacturers assert that where i've or six years ago they obtained 100 yards of cotton they are now only able to produce from eighty five to ninety yards. The thread of the lint is finer and not so robust; it is light er and tenderer. Under proper fostering attention our cotton should be improving both in its tensile strength and weight But we find that this result is not being obtained"
 When the New Orleans party took con trol of the market and forced prizes up forty and fifty points a day there was no one who deplored the effects of such tactics more than did MT. Sully.
 So it's all arranged-Tii marry my Tn that case. though must give her notice by the 18th that l nnn