Shiner gazette. [volume] (Shiner, Tex.) 1893-current, 1908-11-12
Money We Send Abroad.
Texas Sends Away Enough Annual
ly to Build Hundreds of
Factories.

Texas annually raises and
markets about 100000 bales
of cotton. According to Co.
operator for June 1908 the last
crop for Texas is given at o.
204,341 bales weighing five hun
dred pounds each. The aver
age price is given at about
11.45 cents per pound, making
"a total of $125,308,742 or
$57.25 per bale.
Last year was a poor crop
year for cotton in Texas, so for
convenience we will take her av-
erage crop and call it 100000
bales and say that it brings 10
cents a pound, it would bring
to Texas $150,O00,000. Sup
pose that cotton was all. made
up into calico, it is said that a
bale of cotton will make 5000
yards of calico so if it was made
into calico and sold back to
Texas consumers they would
have to dig up the handsome
little SUI moi $450,000,000, just
three times as much as they got
for the raw material or a diff
ference of $300,000,000. The
neat little sum we Texas farm
ers annually contribute to the
European spinners for lack of
factories at home to consume
our raw material,
With factories at home to
consume our raw material we
are annually compelled to see
the foreigners take off two
thirds the value of our great
stable crop and then we get up
and shout what a great people
we are and how independent
we are, when the truth is, if
Europe should go to war and
the cotton trade of England or
Germany or France should be
blockaded our southland would
be thrown into absolute want
in less than a years time. The
situation of our people n the
farms would be almost as bad
as the situation of the mill op-
eratives in Europe was during
our war of the COS. Of course
we could go ahead and raise
such food crops as we could use
and have that advantage of
them but if we were cut off
from our money crop or if the
price of it should decline as it
would under such circumstan-
ces the suffering and loss in the
south would indeed be great.
Why this condition of things
has been so long allowed to con-
tinue is more than this scribe
can tell. Our Texas people
people have money to invest in
all other kinds of enterprises
and are always hurrahing for
some great scheme of trade or
commerce, but this factory
question, to convert Texas raw
material into finished products,
which is admitted to be the very
foundation of England's supre-
macy in the commercial world
today, esems to be overlooked
entirely by Texas business men
who have money to invest.
Texas pays sufficient trib-
ute in profits each year that
passes to foreign manufacture
ers to build enough mills in
Texas to manufacture the entire
cotton crop of the state.
Let us think about this fac
tory business little. Texas
cotton provides the great bulk
of her trade both at home and
abroad. Take the cotton crop
out of Texas one year and ev-
cry commercial concern of any
magnitude in the tsate would
go to pieces. Yet your business
men sit supinely by and let the
foreign manufacturer rake off
two thirds of its annual profits
right before their very eyes.
How many cotton afctories will
$300,000,000 build? How many
spindles, how many looms, how
many operatives would they en-
ploy? How many bales of cot
ton owuld they consume? How
much would the weekly pay
rolls of Texas be increased? Be-
sides the nrnfits accruino dir