The Topeka state journal., 1919-12-29
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC j. HASKIN. Director.
Washington, d. G.
EIGHTY-FIVE CENT COTTON.

Washington, D. c., Dec. 26.-Per-
hapSath most stSiking triumph ever
achieved by science as applied to
farming is now being celebrated in
the Salt river valley in Arizona. The
farmers are doing the celebrating.
They can afford to celebrate because
they are getting fod their cotton the
almost fabulous price of SIS cents a
pound.
Cotton at this price is the new Ell
dorado of the west, and fertile vine-
yards, orange groves and alfalfa fields
are being uprooted that the new crop
may be given an opportunity to en-
rich the holders of these once desert
lands, now made productive by irriga-
ton. Farmers have repeatedly made
ten thousand dollars a year on a fifty
acre field given over to this grade of
cotton.
Its cultivation, an example of the
application of science to the tilling OF
the soil. is proba bly, without an equal
in the success with which it has been
carried out, and in the promise of a
permanent industry which it offers.
The ultimate product is cord tires
flor American automobiles and sewing
cotton for the needles of American
housewives. For the cotton grown in
Arizona is the best cotton in the world
and these are the two important
products which call for cotton of great
strength and durability
| Here is an industry which has re-
suited from taking thought, and from
pursuing one purpose unwaveringly
for two decades. Twenty years ago
the department of agriculture found
down in Egypt, a grade of cotton that
! brought better prices on the market
| than did any other cotton, with the
possible exception of Sea Island cot
ton, of which limited amounts were
grown in South Carolina, Georgia and
Florida.
The price of cotton is governed, 9TH
| er things being equal, by it's length of
staple The longer the fiber of the
! COTTON the more valuable it is on the
market. Sea Island cotton is va
riety developed on the islands of the
South Carolina coast, and now grown
l more extensively in certain interior
counties of Georgia and Florida.
!, There are certain difficulties in the
way of raising it, however, and it's Gull
tivation does not spread. 1t requires
| a long growing season, is difficult to
pick, and deteriorates year by year.
The south is prejudiced against it. The
exactions of its cultivation are too
great.
Egypt had the rival long staple cot
| ton. Egypt had been more successful
| in keeping its strain pure. In Egypt
| the conditions were more favorable to
the cultivation of distinct varieties.
The mass of the long staple cotton of
| the world had come to be grown in
Egypt. The United States. the great
! est of cotton raising countries. had al
lowed itself to be outstripped in grow
ing this thread cotton.
Agricultural explorers were sent to
Egypt and brought home quantities
of the seed of the choice long staple
| thru the cotton regions of the south.
| They did not do we'll They had been
| accustomed for generations to the dry
air and the irrigation of Egypt They
requiTed a longer growing season than
| that of the southern states.
| The representatives of the depart
ment of agriculture turned their at
tention to the far southwest wherS
| conditions more nearly approximated
those of Egypt. Arizona had the dry
cation. Woud Egyptian cotton grow
| there? Would it be sufficiently
profitable to displace those alfalfa
fields which yielded six crops of hay
per year and from one to two tons per
crop? Only experiment would show.
| The best Egyptian cotton was taken
| to Yuma, Ariz., and there propagated.
| The yield was ragged and unlike that
on the Nile. The stranger deported
| itself peculiarly in its new home.
There were isolated plants which
were satisfactory The scientific
propagated them. In the subsequent
crop a greater number of the plants
were satisfactory. Those with salts
factory yields and staple were again
| selected and propagated. After ten
years of this sort of selective growing,
a distinctive variety of cotton was de-
| veIoped that was quite different from
| Egyptian. 1t was called Yun.a cotton.
Yuma is down in the corner of Ari-
zona just across the river from the
great desert of southern California, in
the hottest part of the United States.
Up in the middle of the state is SAGA
| ton reservation where reside certain
| Indian wards of the government. They
have artesian wells and fertile lands.
/ The government has an experiment
station there. Hundreds of miles of
| barren lands stretch in every direction.
There is consequently no possibility of
| a pure strain of cotton becoming con-
! taminated.
| The scientific men at Sacaton took
the Yuma cotton as a basic stock and
| began to build upon it. They selected
plants with certain desirable qualities
! and mated them,>year after year. So
yet another variety of cotton was de-
veloped. 1t was called Pima" from
the Indians of the neighborhood. 1t
is better cotton than the Yuma 1t
| is undoubtedly a better cotton than
the best varieties of Egyptian. 1t is
probably the best variety of cotton in
all the world.
Near Sacaton Indian reservation rs
Salt River Valley. Here strip of
land twenty miles wide and fifty long
| is watered by the famous Roosevelt
reservoir. 1t is a valley built up of
| silt washed down from the mountains
1t is level but gently sloping. It used
to be an uninha bitable sagebrush plain
but was long ago brought under irri-
Observation-Disclosures
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