The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1907-06-22
THE OTHER SIDE.
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Continued from First Page.
on future contract in New Orleans and
New York bring about decline? You
need no better proof than this fact
alone to convince you that the laws
and rules made by the cotton ex-
j changes, governing the receiving and
| delivering Of cotton on contract, are
made against actual cotton. The pur-
chaser of future contracts, being forced
under these rules to receive undesir-
able cotton at a value above its actual
value, is placed in position that he
must sustain loss if he demands and
receives the cotton, and when he be-
comes aware of the fact he sells out
: his future contract and gets out OF it
the best he can. These are cold facts
which cannot be doubted by any one
and the daily cotton market letters pub.
lished throughout the land by different
brokerage houses prove them to be
true. The spinners in meeting as
sembled at Vienna, Austria, few
days ago, passed resolution con-
| ydemning speculation in cotton futures
and setting forth the fact that the pro-
Queer is annually ilched of millions
by the practice, and further claiming
that they have been forced to recog-
nize the fact that they can neither pur-
| chase merehantable cotton by buying
futures nor protect their contracts by
the hedging process. This very ac-
ton on the part of the spinner is con-
vincing proof of the uselessness of the
future market.
The articles that have been published
throughout the south favoring cotton
future speculation warn the cotton
growers that if they do away with the
future market they will place them
selves completely at the mercy of the
cotton buyers, as they will then have
no way to find out the value of their
cotton. The writer of these articles,
however, seems to lose sight of the
fact that the cotton grower has be-
come tired of the other fellow telling
him what his cotton is worth. He now
proposes to place reasonable value
on his crop, based on what If cost him
to produce it, and to tell the other fell
low what it is worth. In other words.
the grower proposes to have voice
in the price making, this being the new
order of things.
There are no futures on wool and
the wool grower fares better than the
cotton grower. There are no futures
on hay and the value of the hay crop
ofthe United States isvery much greater
than that OF the cotton crop. The hay
growers fare better than the cotton
growers, hay lands being worth double
the value of cotton lands. All these
little straws show the way the wind
blows and there are innumerable
others that could be added.
Can you blame the farmer for want
ing to cast off the cotton future yoke
that has CALLED him for SO long?
The growers of cotton commend our
southern legislative bodies for enact
ing laws suppressing or restricting
cotton future gambling, and they hope
and believe that within two years every
state in the south will have enacted
such law and that instead of these
laws being repealed, as is claimed by
friends OF cotton gambling, they will
be amended and made stronger.
The pretended friends of the cotton
growers are flooding the south with
newspaper articles threatening that all
kinds of things will happen to the cot
ton farmer when he parts with his old
friend-the ''cotton future'' market.
The farmers and country merchants,
however, turn a deaf ear to all such
threats, because they know that con-
ditions could not be worse for them
than they have been under the old or
future system" They therefore well
come and demand any change with
what it may bring.
Yours truly,
PAUL M. POTTS.