Pine Bluff daily graphic. (Pine Bluff, Ark.) 1893-1942, 1919-05-04

! South.
Holding a monopoly Of this great
staple, the South should have become
enormously wealthy, and its cotton
growers and workers should have
been the richest agricultural people
in the world, but ow-priced cotton
has kept them under the pail Of pow
erty.
The Importance of cotton to the
! world is very clearly stated in an
article by Mr.. William Whttam, for
rerly special agent in Great Britain
of the United States department of
commerce and long intimately ac-
1nainted with the cotton trade pub
lished in the New York Tribune In
the course of his article dealing with
the question Of cotton and its rela-
ton to world affairs, and especially
as to whether Germany shall be
allowed to have cotton or not, Mr.
Whittam said:
1.-The world has now to face the
task of getting back to normal again,
ard in that enterprise cotton will be
one Of the raw materials of major
Importance. Few realize the signifi-
canoe of cotton in the sphere of HUI
man activities. 1t concerns every hui
man being. 1t meets man at the era
die and goes with him to the grave
The fibre also forms the scanty cloth
ing of hundreds of millions of the
poorest people of the world Cotton is
vital to industry. There is no substi-
tute for it. And Americans should
remember that the United States pro
! duces the larger part of the worlds
sr2ply.
with the single exception of food
stuffs, no other product of the soil is
so necessary to civilized human exis-
tence. Its use in the every day life of
mankind may be measured by the
(! fact that a year or two before the
war, taking into account the commo-
dities handled in international trade
exports and imports from all coun-
tries, cotton ranked first with
value of $1,127 100000, wheat COM
ing second, with value Of $774,000,-
OOO"
These statements of Mr.. Whittam
as to the value of cotton to the world
are trite sayings, fully understood by
the business men of the world. They
know that cotton is product which
cannot be supplanted by any other
fiber. They know that our commerce
| depends upon cotton; that Great
Britain's vast manufacturing inter-
ests are largely dependent upon cot
ton for their existence. They know
that the wealth of New England was
largely created by the manufacture
of Southern-raised cotton.
Woo1fh y,pfnlJ for %l,o horoE% of &Lo (
world has been created by the South's
cotton, but the South has not Sc
cured that wealth. The South has
simply been the "hewer of wood and
the drawer of water" in the worlds
cotton trade.
The world will require an ever-in-
| creasing supply of cotton. Much of
the world is almost bare of cotton
goods, as it is of foodstuffs. Long be-
fore the war there had been a rapid
annual increase in the worlds de-
mand for cotton. This will 60 on at
an accelerating rate just as soon as
the world gets back to normal bust
ness conditions. At that time the
South should be able to produce at
profit to itself the amount of cotton
sufficient to meet the worlds in
creasing needs. But it cannot do this
| it should not do it, and it will not do
| it, nor even try to do it, except on a
basis of profit which will bring to the
agricultural interests of the South
| a prosperity equally as great as the
prosperity of the grain-growing Sec
tions of the West. The South should
not attempt to produce this increased
,1ynv11y Cf oaffnv, ovoonf hoC IF
prices which will completely change
its farm laborers and to its tenant
farmer living wage or income with
cut the necessity of eking out a
scanty existence based on the work
of women and children in the cotton
fields.
This is the great economic and
moral issue before the South. It is
economic, because it means the ques-
tion of poverty or prosperity for a
large proportion of the people of the
South 1t is great moral and edu-
cational issue, because it means the
education or the continued illiteracy
of very large proportion Of the
poorer classes of the South.
The man who opposes the higher
range Of prices for Southern cotton,
which would completely change the
economic and educational life of this
section, is deliberately working for
human slavery, more CALLING, more
degrading to the poorer classes,
white and black, of the South than
was the slavery of ante bellum days
He who wants to place himself on
the side of poverty and against educa-
| tional development should favor a
low price for cotton. All others will
! favor a profitably high price.
For many years the Manufacturers
Record has taken the ground that
the South would be infinitely better
off if it had never raised a bale of
cotton. Under that condition its agri-
| culture would have been diversified
and it would be far richer than it is
today, and slavery would never have