The Aberdeen weekly. [volume] (Aberdeen, Miss.) 1878-1933, 1905-10-20
A Practical View of Cotton CrOp
Conditions.

financial. 1t has dumped NOR,
foreign cash in the United States
and has done NOR. To retain tn.
balance of trade IN favor of Amer
can Commerce than any other
American c"mmOdity. Ii has con
trIl.utsd more to the innInrI.se
wealth If the English manufacture. +
aHd done more To cl,tlIc and make
comfortable Tia inhabitants of tl,e
earth than any ..tln-r on articb.:
so that hundreds uf millions ul the.
earth inhabitants are directly in
tercsted in the aggregate of the
American crop, all Of whom are af-
fected directly by the price paid for
the raw material With more than
$40 Of this army Of Spectators,
manufacturers and consumers striv-
ing u depress prices, leaving the
producer and a few spectators to
fight the most unequal battle ever
waged in the history Of the world,
hence it Is not strange that the pro-
ducer should organize for mutual
protection; and yet strange To say
that nobody has any confidence in
their organizations, not even the
farmer himself Although they all
know a ten million bale crop means
II l2 cents as minimum price
at the gin, they will plant for and
try To raise fourteen million crop
with maximum of six cents for
two consecutive crops of this size
Men may speculate on individual
conditions, or individual Judge
ment, or personal environment and
such trashy platitudes and main
nancial death and encourages Il pol
icy that no other industry would
pursue
Whenever the English and Amer
leaf manufacturer or the iron pro-
ducer finds the market glutted he
promptly reduces the output Of his
mills and maintains profitable
prices, but not So with the Ameri
can producer Of cotton When
prices are depressed he trys To make
more cotton to sell at less price
with "A lot of theoretical farmers and
Spectators, ninc-tcnths of whom
are clever, nice financial failures.
advising the exercise of individual
Judgement and personal environ
nlent and in the end financial sui
eide
50 much has been said ~ pre-
ludc to my observations and Judge
mcnt uf present conditions. | have
known the delta with its immense
possibilities for ten years. ] have
Travelled over it and supcrintcnded
the cuitivatiu of n much cotton
as almost any man i'll IT and this Is
h.yond comparison the poorest crop
! have ever known. Under no pos
sible conditions from today could
il make more than fifty per
cent Of last years crop. To begin
with, acreage was never quite equal
t. last year and, mt conservative
estimate ten per cent of the planted
crop has been thrown out. At least
twenty per cent Of that cultivated is
on low land and this-October ID
is just beginning to open and much.
very much of this late cotton has
not got an open bale on it; certain
ly six weeks late of any thing l ever
saw. Just what this cotton will do
depends, of course, ON frost condi-
tions. An ordinary killing frost
would not effect it seriously but
a freeze by Nov 10th means de
struction-
Again, l have not seen from
Memphis to fhis place, distance
Of 100 miles, single acre Of aver
age cotton, So that with practical
" failure, or to say the least OF it,
an unusually light crop in the prai-
rie and hills of the State and barely
half crop from Memphis to Nicks-
burg will not harvest more than one
million bales of cotton. Just what
is being done in the extreme east
and west is more than ! know, but
l do know that the great valleys Of
Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississip-
pi is by odds the poorest crops they
have made since my recollection,
with almost total failure in the
great prairie belt Of East Mississip-
pi and Alabama.
Again. the worms have stripped