The Nevada County picayune., 1910-08-26
THREE FEATURES OF COTTON
Care Of Soil, Improvement of Seed and Marketing Are Factors
 to Be Considered.

said among other things:
 At present there are three special and important features about the cot ton situation so far as its possibilities are concerned. First, the care of the soil; second, the improvement of the seed, and third, marketing. AS to pro ducing cotton one-fourth of the South is not fin cultivation yet; of the 164. e00.000 acres in Texas only 19,000. 900 acres are in cultivation. This alone is capable of doubling the present yield several times. Again. by better care of our soil and better cultural methods the present yield can be doubled on the present acreage. am quite sure our cotton In the seed Is not yielding more than 30 per cent of lint. It now looks like 50 per cent Is possible and there Is not much doubt of 40 per cent This would increase our yield one-third. So without in creasing our acreage we can supply the worlds increasing demands for the next quarter of century, by bet ter cultural methods. better seed se- lection and breeding.
 would like to call your attention to the possibilities of cotton from finan- cial standpoint. that which interests us most
 The cotton crop Is very important one: the banker, the merchant, the railroad man, the professional man and the laborer. are all more or less dependent upon cotton. These inter ests should not only wish well for cotton, but they should act.
 To understand more clearly the i'm. portance of the cotton crop and the amount of money very small ad. vance or decline makes I will make a few comparisons. We will first com. pare our cotton crop with the capital of cur national banks. The capital of the national banks of the cotton states Is $100,G000 the cotton crop and seed for 1909 Is estimated to be worth $1.00O. 1000, ,000-enough to equip 10 times as many banks. Two cents per pound advances in price on an as all this capital. The 1909 Texas cotton and cotton seed crop Is suffl- cient to furnish the capital and indi- vidual deposits of every national bank in the state and have money left. All the gold and silver produced in the world annually will not pay for the cotton grown in the South annually. We export more cotton annually than the world produces in gold. Two thirds of a cent per pound advance in the South's cotton crop will produce more money than Is spent In the com mon schools of the South. including the five Southern states that do not raise cotton.
 The Texas cotton crop for two years, with the seed, would buy the state of Florida. Three years would buy South Carolina and four years would buy the District of Columbia with the capitol. One cent per pound advance on cotton would bring to the people of Texas from $15.000,000 to S20, 100000 annually. This would make every mans shirt cost one-half cent more, woman's dress one cent more, the Chinese shirt would cost one cent more and the same for the Japanese kimono. I have gone over these statis- tics and made these comparisons to impress on our minds the realities and wonders of cotton and to show how much we can be benefited and at how little expense to the rest of the world. We can see clearly that if 1t takes surplus money to build factories, rail- roads and other needed Improvements, make the crop bring small amount more, it will produce a great sum of surplus money in very short time, If We would study half as hard to conserve the value of our cotton crop as we do to get capital from the East we would build up surplus fund of our own to build them quicker.
 There Is a great wave of education spreading over the South-everybody is talking better farming. everybody Is thinking of the development of our natural resources-which is demand ing a better and more stable price for cotton. Our market system is OduiJ dl idulls iSaAAEc this
 Our states elect legislature every two years to amend our laws and make new ones. and when they get badly out of shape we call constitu tional convention to remedy the foun dation of our law system. think it time to call constitutional conven. tion for cotton.
 I hope the business men will see that 1t is as much their business to have good crops and fair prices foI cotton as the farmer. It is as much their duty to do their part in this great fight as anyone. We can not win without them.