Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-05-16
The Export Cotton Plan.

The plans now being perfected at the New
Orleans conference for organizing the Amer
lean Cotton Export Financing Corporation
bid fair to forge in effectual form Mr.. w. P.
G. Hardings useful idea for facilitating the
South's overseas cotton trade.
That idea, first publicly advanced about
two months ago, looked to the establishment
of cooperative agency by cotton growers
and dealers to serve them, as regards for
eign markets, in somewhat the same capaci
ty as the Georgia Fruit Exchange serves the
orchard interests of this State Before the
exchange was instituted selling the peach
crop was always an uncertain and oftentimes
a distressful adventure. Some markets
would be glutted whilst others were left un-
supplied; standards for packing, grading
and shipping were for the most part either
unknown or ignored and in consequence the
majority of consumers were as i'll served as
the majority of growers were unprotected.
But when this haphazard course OF every
man for himself and the devil take the hind
most was superseded by a cooperative sys-
tenn of marketing under which the individual
had the advantages of combined resources
and under which good service with sound
values was guaranteed the buyer, as well as
the seller, then the Georgia peach crop grew
steadily profitable and incomparably popu-
lar. Similar methods applied to export sales
results.
It is upon this conviction that leaders in
Southern agriculture merchandising and fl
nance base their confident hope of making
the Harding plan great instrumentallty for
safety and service. The proposed organiza-
ton can be formed -nder the Webb act
which framed for the specific purpose
of enabling American producers to cope with
the problems and profit by the opportunities
of the foreign-trade ,eriod which follows the
close of the war. Cotton producers and
their related interests are especially in need
of larger and better facilities for negotiating
foreign sales, arranging terms Of credit, pro-
curing necessary guarantees from foreign
banks and in divers other ways promoting
the foreign cotton trade. These functions
are interestingly suggested in the press re
ports of the New Orleans conference. "In
addition to finding a market abroad for cot
ton and cotton products we are told, land
making the necessary contracts, the corpo-
ration would be empowered to deal in notes,
drafts. checks, bills of exchange, acceptances,
cable transfers, or other evidences of indebt-
edness. It could take bonds of foreign Gov
ernments or of foreign banks, syndicates or
other private business firms, and make loans
to those foreign interests on the security OF
their obligations. BY this means the corpo-
ration virtually would sell its cotton to for
eign purchasers on credit, raising money in
this security of the foreign bonds to finance
the operations. . Cotton dealers would
act through the corporation in export deal
ings, but might if they chose, ship goods
abroad in their own name, and receive loans
from the corporation on the security of ship
ping documents 1t seems, moreover. that
though the length and interest rate of these
loans is not yet settled, term as long as
five years might be arranged; and that the
organization itself might borrow from the
Governments War Finance Corporation
which is authorized to make within the
year after peace is declared. five-year loans
70 exporters or banks that have financed
american export transactions
Particulars like these, however, can be de-
termined later. The important and encour-
aging fact is that a movement which holds
intellectually helpful power for the South is
moving steadily toward consummation.