The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1914-12-13

of our soap. Is the refuse from the man.
ufacture OF this oil; that cotton felt beds
as manufactured right in Birmingham are
the best beds on earth, ami that those
who have used them cannot afterward
be persuaded to pay the higher prices
and suffer the loss of sleep comfort in
volved in buying Ostermoor hair. moss
or other mattresses much advertised. The
fuzz left on the seed after 1t has been
stripped On passing through the GIN of
its fiber and which might be termed its
underclothes, is. before the seed are
crushed in the oil mill. taken off and gives
us our supply of linters from which are
now produced millions of pounds yearly
of padding of various kinds, yarns for
making mops lamp wicks and even rope
and Irvine.
These are some of the useful products
of the cotton plant, many of which are
not appreciated by the American peo-
pie, and in our daily lives we constantly
buy and use imported substitutes of va
rious sorts In place of these home prod
ucts, enricning other people at the ex-
pense of our own section. As an Illus
tration of the tremendous values possible
to be created in our section through the
intelligent manufa cture and use of cot
ton products we have but to glance again
at the development of the last 10 years
in the use of the seed products. We
have noted that in 1876 the cotton seed
not only produced no values but actually
entailed cost for its destruction or care
Taking even the low prices of linters
hulls cake and oil now prevailing, and
the seed from the crop of 1914 will bring
to the south revenue greater than the
amount received by the south for its total
cotton crop in 1876.
Our manufacture of cotton products and
the uses of these by the American peo
pie are still in their infancy The south
parts with these products either raw
or IN the lowest stages of manufactures
and therefore secures the smallest amount
OF the great values finally obtained by.
those who deliver to the ultimate con-
sumner these products in high state of
manufacture. As an illustration of this.
Our lint cotton bought in the south at
from 6 cents to II cents per pound is
shipped abroad to the factories of Spain.
France, little Belgium and other countries
and returned to US in the form of mus
Inns, organizes. laces and lightweight
goods for which our ladies sometimes
pay as high as SIS per pound; or, again,
take our crude cotton oil shipped to Bor-
deaux and after certain refining processes
is returned to us or sent to the nations
south of us as prime olive oil at an In
crease in value many times that re-
ceived by US. The particular user of olive
oil fails to find this refined cotton oil,
when bearing a foreign label, inferior to
the olive oil of the past; likewise, our
cotton oil cooking compounds are health
full and even more satisfactory than the
lard which we buy from our neighbors in
the west.
The cotton meal has human food values
and is just being appreciated, not by us,
in America, as by our Dutch friends:
and to Holland great quantities of the
cotton seed cake are shipped each year
for both human and animal consumption.
We seem, in America. to be still very
new and to take territorial view of our
selves and without investigation to ac-
cept as true the idea that the things we
get from the older countries of our orr
gin are better than those we produce
| ourselves. To satisfy our tastes produced
by this viewpoint costs America and espe-
cially the south, millions of dollars each
year International trade is necessary
and proper and we should encourage it,
but let us, in the filling of our require
ments, encourage first our own people
| by using those things which the south
has and produces better than can be
| supplied elsewhere. Through this hell
we encourage manufacturers in this coun-
| try to develop refinements in the CONVEX.
| sion of our raw materials and thus in.
crease the employment of skilled labor
and the accumulation of invested wealth
1t is remarkable fact that little
| Belgium, now SO pathetically in the
public eye, with an area less than one
fourth that of Alabama, of all the ma
lions in the world was the fourth larg-
est exporter of cotton goods, while the
United States which produces 80 per
cent of all the raw cotton for world
manufacture imports of cotton goods
more than any other nation except
three.
On account of our soil and china tie
we have in this great natural asset
the cotton plant) practical monopoly
of the worlds cotton supply. We have
for years been parting with our birth
| right as a spendthrift and not as a