The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-16
ALABAMA'S COTTON CROP .
 WORTH $7O,OOO,OOO A YEAR

1 the state The only year that eXceIled It was the previous year. 1905 when. Alabama.
 The city of MontgonisrS Is. of courss the greatest inland lrotton town In Alabama. In cotton receipts 1t is ex- ceiled by Mobile only.Swhieh. being a port town. has thousands of bales ship ped to It each month tffa8 they may be put upon vessels bouaa for Euro- pean ports In the cotton year which ended last September !. arKfohtgosnefy received 169,232 bales. At an estimate of more or less accuracy, this crop of one year was worth s7,5A0.e00. which any reasonable man will agree is pretty big yearly agricultural asset for any city. 4as
 The Smallest crep. The smallest crop raised in the Am- l erican States since the growing of tcotton became a great agricultural In~ ldustry, was the slender crop of 1887, when only 2.23s.000 bafes wsre produc-s Emancipation of the nears slaves. 1 Freedmen's bureaus were numerous tn the South. and the neErg had not then led. This was sthe year ssafter actual met face to face the remorseiess ne- vessity of going to work on his own hook sg
 The bumper" cotton crop year was the year of 1905 when the enormous lcrop of 1S,5s4,457 bales. was grown. No such crop as that was exar grown be- fore. The Department 0raaAgriculture reports say this year ttlAtufhe crop fs going to be upwards of 12,UUU,0oO bales, but there Is no prospectg that the re- cord made by the bumper crop will l be approached The largest crop pre- vious to this was the crop of 1889 | when 11,256,000 bales or American eot- ton were grown. This crop was follow- | nA hvy than followed the bumper crop Of year ago.
 It is worthy of hote, however, that the low water mark of the cotton mar i ket was reached in the days of tha big plantations and in the days of slave labor. The lowest record price for cotton was in the years 1s43. IeA4, is45 and Is4S, when cotton sold as low as an even five cents n pound Some fifty years later those unenvfable fig ures were almost reached. In the years of 1894, 1895, 1896 1898 and 1899 cotton | sold at figure which @assonly frae- | ton over five cents when the market was at It's lowest. Thes foweSt fraction occurred in the year ta9S svhen cotton sold for 5-16 cents a pound only. ;
 The big price years were. Of course, the years In which the War had bound and gagged King Cotton and tho yearsi which immediately followed that indus- trial wrong. When cotton sold for a dollar and ninety cents pound as lt did in ls64 the market was an abnor- maj market even as was the market for bread during the size of Paris when bread was worth more than its weight in si1- yer and almost worth it's weight sfn l gold, Tn the following year, the year of 1865 cotton sold as high as a dollar and twenty cents Q pound. IL was not tnnf a thing like normal figures. And egen .hen it brought more than eighteen cents pound. In the ycaf 1881 1t drop- ped to thirteen cents and it never went above that figure until the sensational year of 1904 when a new high water mark was set for the cotton market under normal conditions. The hish price price that year was 1865
 Cotton Association.
 In the same year the Southern Cot- ton Association was formed. an organ ization which has undoubtediy dona more to influence the market in favor of the cotton producer than any other farmers organization. TlBs association is cooperative organization. the pri- mary purpose of which is'the marketing of the cotton crop in Rn intelligent and harmonious waysy aIts has been an industrial problem to explain swhy cot ton, perhaps the greatest agricultural product of the United States, should be dumped upon the market in its en- tirety during two or three short months. year. after year the. market dropped during the short time in which the farmer was rushing his cotton to mar ket and 1t lifted in the simmer when other people were selling cotton ana not the producer. a
 The association has affected the mar ket beyond doubt though 1t may not have accomplished all that It's founder had hoped for. If 1t did nothing eIse than expose the crookedness of one or more clerks in the Bureau of statis- ties, it would have meTited the praise and commendation of the cotton pro- ducer. In the face Of insulting official indifference and in the, ,fahs of official denial the officers of the Association pursued their investigations and expoa- ures until they had deu1onsfrated that Wall Street had had a corrupt conneo- ton with the crop estimates by which | tt got Information in AaVanca of the rest of the country.
 Harvie Jordan, a distinguished Geor- gian, is President of the Association. | w. IT. Seymour, Of Mourgomery. is ae the head of the Alabama oivision. The Association continues .v4tat and effec- tive
 What of This CFopR
 l What of the crop In December. which
 
 Is part of the year Of 1907?
 A bad year was predioted. A tropf- cal storm apparently made certain that prediction. Cotton cahIs"' tH so slowly for a while that it looked as though the crop was practically a failure. Yee is the past two weeks the amount of cotton marketed in Montgomery is dou- ble the omunt marketed in the same time of previous cotton8 year. Notwith- standing the increased reoeipts of the past two weeks the total receipts in Montgomery for the season as liar as 1t has gone are 20,00p tese than they were for the same ttEnaspf last year. Until last Friday the reeelBts in Mont gomery for this seaaon Amounted te 112,00O bales Up until thescorrespond- ing date of last seasnA the total re ceipts in the city of osthsgomery waa 132,OO0. 4kFR
 The market is not auits@as sattsfac- tory as the farmers had8Eeason te hope for in view of the Qnfa9erable condt- tions and tho unfav0f flsie Reasons pha highest price this year has. been II f-t6 Tine lowest figures qpeted during the | fall were the figures quoted Friday l Cotton was worth on that day only @ 5-S
 The Department at washington haa l rurthermore made ap scs aInate that Ia decidedly depressing on the market It has been estimated that the crop this year in spite of all coHplaint about imfavorable conditions whl reach tha Ibir total of l2.546,60a bales, outside of tho hnters. The linterss if this esti- Imafc is correct will bring the total