The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1915-06-30

our farms self.sustaining. For
a money crop cotton is and must
ever remain our dependence.
The Federal Government is
to spend about S275, 900 a year
in this State teaching our peo'
pie to grow food and stock.
There is more money spent
teaching girls to can tomatoes
than I have to organize the ma
chinery to handle a hundred mil
lion dollars worth of cotton.
Are the fiscal and economic
policies of this government go
ing to undertake to compel pro-
ductive labor, at less and less
cost. to feed an ever increasing
urban population?
We are constantly reminded
and taught to emulate that my
biological farmer who made two
blades of grass grow where one
grew before. The government
is sending out experts to teach
scientific agriculture. We are
urged to grow two bales of cot
ton where we grew one before,
but it seems to be taken for
granted that the extra blade of
grass or bale of cotton must go
to the consumer, instead of to
the man who made it grow.
THE soUTH's MONOPOLY.
We have seen cotton, since
last August, go from five cents
to ten cents a pound, in the face
of the largest crop ever made.
Our cotton crop for the last
thirty years has been the corner
stone of International finance.
The South has a practical mo-
nopoly in the production of cot
ton, and the needs of the world
each year call for more cotton.
There has never been a nation
on earth with such a monopoly
of a vital product as the South
has on cotton. All in vain
Great Britain and Russia have
attempted to break this monop.
oily. Our percentage shows q
steady increase with each de-.
cade. Egypt produces beauti'
full staple, but the area fit for
cotton is not more than one.
fourth the size of South Carolina
and can not be increased. Eng.
land experimental in Africa,
but the fibre is so coarse that it
has little commercial value.
Russia is growing some cotton
in Central Asia, but the erea is
very limited, and in that dry
climate irrigation must be re-
sorted to.
No one crop has ever had so
wide an influence, and it's future
power in making human history
can hardly be exaggerated.
Each fall a great tide of gold is
broughtin from abroad, that en-
ables the fnanciers of this coun-
try to dictate to the balance of
the world. And yet the people
who produce that cotton, and
the section in which it is pro-
duced. are the poorest, per cap
ita, in the United States. Un-
der present financial conditions
we have been forced to market
a twelve.months supply IN three
months, and then in the spring,
after the crop has passed out of
the hands of the producers, spec
ulators and middle. have
reaped a profit, as now, Of sew.
enty-fve per cent on their in
vestment.
The people of the South
should all unite in an effort to
place cotton upon a safe. stable
basis. Then the manufacturer
would know just what to do.
No business can be pro6ta BILE
with the fluctuations in price
running from six to sixteen cents
for this great crop.
IS IT TO BE PATERNALJSM OR
IMpovERISEMENT?
One of the objections urged
to the State Warehouse System
is paternalism. I say no, it is
only justice. For 100 years the
protecting arms of this govern
ment have been thrown around,
not the producer, but the manu-
facturer of cotton. He has been
protected by a monopoly in the