The Savannah morning news., 1904-03-21

asking the questions, cotton continued
to soar-10l5 cents, 1G&. II, 1112.
In May, after Sully had been all win
! ter in the pit. he had made more than
a million and he wanted rest. He got
out of the market and with his wife
and three children went to Europe.
Started Speculative Craze.
He was hardly out of sight of the
harbor lights when a new operator APP
peared on the scene. He was Col. w.
p Brown of the firm of w. P. Brown
& Co. of New Orleans With him
came Thomas Majors and Frank
Hayne, and they, while Sully was
touring Europe and having fun, exc
cuted as near corner in a staple
product as anybody ever brought
about. To all practical purposes cot
ton was "cornered." Up went the prices
again, and it seemed as if there could
be no limit. 'Twenty-cent cottOni'
was the cry that rang from New Or
leans to Liverpool.
The mania for cotton speculation
seized the cotton planters of the South.
Farmers bought options of farmers.
| Sully the magician, and the bulls who
followed him, touched the mortgages
on the cotton plantations of the South
land and they melted away. Brown,
the manipulation. held up the price and
the cotton growers saw more real
money almost than their fathers had
before the war.
Climax of the Bull Movement.
BY and by Sully returned from his
holiday and he and the New Orleans
men joined forces under his leadership.
The cotton pit was a bedlam again and
the prices shot up and ever upward,
until 17A cents was reached. But the
limit had been reached. There were
| HIlc nd short
| ly after the holidays, Sully announced
that he had retired and was going
South.
Then it was that ugly rumors spread
abroad that Sully had sold to his as
sociates. They said nothing and the
general notion was that Sully had
cleaned up something more than 49,,
100000 in about a year. But the
King" changed his mind. He stayed
here instead of going South. On Feb.
5, he was flooded with selling orders
and he had to retire from the pit. That
was the beginning of the tumble which
became a crash yesterday.
However great the wreck may be-
Sully will still have a home for him
self and his family. AS a Christmas
gift to his wife he bought the new
house at East Sixty-second street.
The price was said to be $265, 900. The
house was fitted up and furnished, re-
gardless of cost. Sully and his family
only moved into it early this
month.
Why SuIIy Was a Bull on Cotton.
One day last fall friend of Sully's,
sitting in the latters New York office,
| asked the Cotton King what he had
meant when a few years before he
said that he knew absolutely that
| there were millions in cotton specula-
faII
story which revealed the theory on
which he played:
Others speculated on wind" said he,
| but l speculated because 1 was firm
| in my belief that cotton has been de-
| teriorating for years. In February, 1899,
| the idea first came to me. 1 was on
one of my trips South. While riding
along the Yazoo and Mississippi Rail-
| road l saw that great quantities of
cotton seed were lying out in the road
! exposed to the freezing weather. Cas-
ually 1 wondered what must be the
| effect of this frost on the next cotton
| crop. l became more interested in
this than in any other problem l ever
| encountered.
Problem of the Frozen Seed.
81 knew that the outside layer of the
seed must certainly be frozen, and that
the life in the heart of the seed must
inevitably be affected by the frozen
| outside layer. l know from long OBJ
| servation that the planters would not
take the trouble to pick out the frozen
seed, but that they would SOW it just
as it lay on the fields and in the pens.
Before he sells his cotton staple the
planter has his first chance to get
ready money by selling cottonseed.
Makers of cotton oil used to pay $13 a
ton for the seed. Now they pay S22.
Before the farmer bales his cotton he
hurries off his seed to the oil mill and
gets cash for it.
And this seed is always from the
first picking, which is the best. 1t is
certain that the seed from the second
picking of cotton is inferior. This thing
has been going on for years. 1t is go
ing on at this moment. The cotton has
deteriorated. 1t will continue to dwin-
die until the government steps in or
the planters of their own accord save
their best cotton seed for planting.
THE demand for cotton is constant
ly increasing. Under the wasteful sys-
tenn of planting that has gone on for
years our supply fails, and will for
some time continue to fail to keep up
with the increased demand. The price,
therefore, is bound to rise"
But yesterday it really seemed as
if another system had gone wrong.