Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1919-10-24
70 90 az ZAE EzRE

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A EARCHING for a small,
sz-z -s thin, rose-tinted, almost
Es I white caterpillar in TO-
h3 900 acres of Texas cot
M 4 ton land confronted with
B the necessity of making
" certain that in all that
Il area no single caterpillar
60 made good its conceal
ment in boil or stalk or
leaves or grass or trash; forced to
sweep every inch of the 10000 acres
as closely as a scrupulous housewife
sweeps the kitchen floor and to slit
every pint of the sweepings as care
fully as a miser would sift dirt with
gold nuggets in it-there is task be-
side which the one of searching for a
needle in a haystack appears simple
and as requiring no patience worth
mentioning.
But that is exactly what the United
States department of agriculture, with
the help of the state authorities of
Texas did in the campaign for the
elimination of the pink bollworm of
cotton. 1t was done SO successfully
that not a single egg, larva, or moth
Of the pink bollworm appeared in 1918,
result that appears to justify the
characterization of the job as the big
gest successful chronological expert
ment of its kind in history.
When it was first found that the
pink bollworm of cotton had gained
a footing upon the soil of the United
States, the CONSERVATION that resulted
was hardly less than it would have
been if the discovery had been made
that German gunboats were coming up
the Mississippi river. But the con-
Sternation was among agricultural
scientists. The general public did not
know the desperate danger The scien-
lists knew, however, that. unless
checked, the little bollwOrm meant an
annual loss of not less than S50O00,-
600, if, indeed, it did not threaten the
existence of the cotton industry. and
their alarm was not materially less
ened because the infested area was
limited to small areas around Trinity
Bay. Beaumont. and Hearne, Texas.
For the pink bollworm spreads. not
by yards or acres, but by hundreds of
miles at a leap. The chief agent OF
dissemination being man with his rail-
road trains, the distance from Texas
to Georgia or North Carolina is no
great jump. and it probably would not
be direct jump. The larva would
he loaded into q car of cotton at Beau
mont, say. shipped to New Bedford,
Mass, and left in the litter at the
bottom of the car, which would then
go to Brockton for load of shoes
consigned to Atlanta. and would final
ly get swept out on some siding in the
Georgia cotton fields.
And there it would begin anew the
devastation that it has wrought in
Egypt. India, Japan, the Philippines,
ceylon. the Straits Settlements. the
Hawaiian Islands, Brazil Mexico and
practically every cotton-growing coun-
try on the globe except the United
States. 1t is the most destructive of
all enemies of cotton, often reducing
tte yield of lint by 80 per cent and
sometimes by more than so per cent,
and greatly lessenfng the quantity of
oil produced from the seed. In the
Hawaiian Islands the cotton industry
has been practically abandoned be-
cause of it. and wherever it has gone
the industry. has suffered terribly.
That is why the department of agri-
culture. when the worm appeared in
Texas. thought it worth while to I'M
fertake campaign out of all proper
tien TO the area infested.