The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-12-14
Governor Blanchard Ad-
dresses the Body.
THE BOIL WEEvIL PEST
Gathering of the Great Body Explain
ed. Mass Meeting of Growers to
Take Action Over Low Prices.
Every Cotton State
Represented.
(By the Associated Press.)

| 10y the ASSOCidlSu L / eoS'J
| Shreveport, La, Dec. 12.-At the
night session of the National Cotton
| Convention permanent organization
was affected by the unanimous cleo
| ton of z. f. Peters, of Texas as
president and Professor J. H. Council
| as secretary, and three delegates
from each state represented and
were named as committee on resolu-
| tons.
! After listening to addresses by Hon.
Harvie =. Jordan, OF Georgia, and ID.
J E. Smith, of South Carolina. the con-
| ventiOn adjourned unit! tomorrow
More than four hundred delegates,
representing every cotton growing
State in the South We're assembled al
the Grand opera House when the con-
yention was opened at 3 o'clock TINS
afternoon.
! Temporary organization was effect
ed by the domination and election Of
Hon. ". 9. Bolton. of Rarides, La. as
temporary chairman, and Prof. .. II.
Connell. of Dallas, Texas, as temper
airy secretary
The convention was called to order
by Judge J. G Pugh, chairman of the
executive committee, who voiced the
purpose OF the gathering Judge PuSh
said that the delegates had been called
together to consider q question OF vital
importance to the welfare OF the SOUTH
and indeed. to that of the nation.
Temporary Chairman Bolton, in a
brief address. made an earnest plea to
the delegates for action. Mr.. Bolton
then read the following telegram from
Secretary of Agriculture Wilson at
washington:
Hon. ]. C. Pugh, Shreveport, La.
DIR. Howard, entomolOgist of this
hoo mi
perience in boil Wevil work in Texas,
goes to represent me at the Shreveport
convention. l would be with you Il
my duties here did not imperatlVely
keep me in the city. | hope your de-
alterations will be instructive, help
full and conservative. 1 go before
the House Committee on Agriculture
today to urge the appropriation OF a
large amount of money to deal with
the boil weevil in the Southern states.
particularly Louisiana and Texas for
the coming year
| The reading of the message was
greeted with an outburst OF applause
Address of Blanchard.
Governor Blanchard, of louisiana.
next welcomed the delegates to the
State He said:
THE question that has brought you
here to hold this great convention is
growing region of the South. 1t ar
fects Intimately and directly the
whole country. If the cotton crop or
the South is to be destroyed by this
pest; if the growth of cotton as COM
mercial product in the South is to
cease as the result of the invasion of
this insect, it will prove a Worldwide
calamity. 1t will affect ruinously large
commercial interests; it will affect
disastrously every commercial inter-
est and every line of trade the world
over. More, perhaps than any other
single product Of the soil. cotton per
meates and adjusts and regulates the
balance of the worlds trade.
ITS culture and harvesting, its prep
aration for the market, it's transporta-
ton to the market. its marketing, its
manufacture and the sale of it's fab
RIGS give employment to millions of
people in our own country. Its trans
pOrtation abroad gives employment to
many thousands of ship-building and
scattering men, and its manufacture
into cloth in foreign lands, and the
sale of such manufactures, gives en-
ployment to millions of men and Wo-
men there.
LAS a merchantable product it is
Well-night indispensable to the worlds
trade. But more than this. The con-
ltinued growth of cotton in these South
|
sable to the convenience and comfort,
aye, even almost to the existence it
self, of the people of the world. In
the far greater part the people of the
world depend on cotton fabrics with
which to clOthe themselves.
'Their reliance is on the Southern
States OF the great American republic
for that which clothes them, for here
in the South we have the practical
monopoly of the growth of the cotton
plant.
Great effort and vast expenditures
of treasure have been made TO develop
its growth in other regions of the
worlds surface, but without success.
The cotton in the world grown
outside Of the United Stated has
scarcely an appreciable effect on the
cotton market. The eyes of ali are
on the South's cotton What is
: the American crop going to be? What
the price it will likely bring? These
are the question men ask of one
, another the world Ger.
THE South, gentlemen of the con-
lvention, is the clothier of the world.
Let its crop of cotton fail for three
years consecutively and the people of
! the world will go in rags and naked
ness. Suppose, now as threatened by
this pest of the boil weevil, it fails per-
manently; and what will the people
| w LOT C1OIiIllS NOOI ana SILK anu
ramie fabrics will not go round, as
staple articles of clothing, to more
than third of the worlds popula-
ton Are the people to go naked?
That is not too broad question to
ask, ana to ask here and now, in view
OF the terrible menace which over
hangs the South in this plague of
| the Weevil
The cotton crop of the South is
worth to the people of the South in
the raw six hundred millions of dol
lars per annum. 1t is worth four times
that when manufactured. AS q mine
| of wealth it exceeds all the gold mines
ever discovered. The gold mines be-
come exhausted in time. The soil of
the South that produces the cotton
does not exhaust The cotton crop
this mine of wealth. with it's output
of six hundred millions-has been
:coming every year It will continue
Ito come every year, only increasing