Albuquerque evening citizen. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1905-1907, 1906-10-13
Other Industries Stop During
Picking Season For the
Lack of Hands.
WHITE HARVEST WEALTH
MAKER OF sunny SOUTH
Producers Hold Crop For Paying
Prices and Diversified Farming
Pays Expenses Of Year.

FL Paso, Texas, Oct. 13.-All Texas
is busy gathering the great cotton
crop, the biggest in the history of the
biggest of states, and people needing
labor in other branches of business
are compelled to wait until the great
white harvest is over.
During this season, as "hands" be-
come in greater demand, the price for
pickers gradually rises from about 40
cents to as high as a dollar a hun
dred pounds, and this brings pickers
from the railroads, the cities and the
docks until practically every other
business is forsaken. Whole families
go to the fields and everybody works.
A good picker can gather nearly 400
pounds Of cotton day, so quite COM
Portable sum can be laid aside for
the winter
Texas is the banner cotton state of
the union and for her size produces
more of the staple than any domain in
he world. Last year her crop was in
round numbers, 3,250,000 bales and
this year il will be larger, about A.
000,0 bales, Notwithstanding that
there Is a greater diversity of crops.
When the great hvIds are covered
with the white open bolls. they need
attention and they need 1t promptly.
Rain will kill the high value of a
crop by knocking the hollis to the
ground and filling them with dirt
wind will blow 1t out and the hot sun
will dry It so that 1t is not of good
quality when ginned.
The modern cotton crop Is raised by
modern methods. There are no more
big plantations like those that were
typical In the south "befo' de wah.'
Traction engines, cotton plows and
antemQ biles figure In the game today
The farmers makes more money with
less trouble on their small farms and
the diversity of crops raised gives the
tiier of the soil advantages that were
once undreamed of.
Now everything from rice to cotton
, wheat to potatoes, celery. pears, peach
es, grapes and watermelons is raised
every year and the result Is that In
stead of being forced to sell the cot
ton crop as sooG as II is picked, the
grower can get along by marketing
some of his other products and hold
ing back the white harvest, that means
solid cash, until prices are right For
several years the price has been
| around ten cents or over for all the
cotton that was sold.
| The Texas farmer was never so in
dependent as today. He has his home
and his conveniences. He raises all
he needs and then has his cotton to
purchase the luxuries. If he needs
money before he markets his crop he
can get 1t through the Cotton Grow
ers' association. He sends to Cleve
land or New York or some other place
for an automobile or a piano for his
daughter and then he waits and sens
when he gets ready.
| New national banks have sprung
up all over Texas in the last two
years and the farmers in nearly every
instance are the biggest stockholders
They have taken a fly into the finan
cial world and there Is going to be nc
high financing" while they are in
the saddle. They have arranged mat
ters, however, so that the farmer can
get money just as easy as the mer
chant and it is no longer the farmer
going to the city man for q loan. II
Is the farmer going to his own bank
| He has become more intelligent in
every way and now is really king OF
the greatest state in the union made
so by King Cotton with a safe ad-
mixture of diversities.
Cotton is still the absolute monarch
| however, and will remain SO always
in Texas, but 1t does not now control
the farmer-he controls 1t.