Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-03-18
THIRTY ACRES OF COTTON RAISED
AT CORNELIA, Ga, BRINGS 81 | 900

! rieties. The size and type of the
! previous years crop was about what
[ wanted, so I kept the same plant
+; ing distances, both ways. That was
good crop, and it, too, was all
| housed before frost.
| "Abaut year ago we ginned this
crop and some really important facts
were proved. The cotton 1 had Sc
cured from Mississippi, as the basis
for my cotton breeding experiments
had showed only 20 per cent lint. The
second crop showed some improve
ment, but not much. The third made
greater progress. And last year
| that is the 1919 crop-offered over 33
| per cent lint. That meant some
thing; it is a real triumph to increase
from 20 to 33 per cent lint.
1.-The samples were brought to At
lanta and seven expert graders were
called in. Two of them were from
Liverpool, and one was said to be
the best cotton grader in the world.
They agreed on two things. First,
that the cotton was the most regular
crop they had ever inspected; second
that the fiber was a full one and
! three-sixteenth inches.
Zone of the chief objections to eX-
| tra-staple cotton is the irregularity
| in length of fiber. The fact that my
cotton was not irregular was of much
Importance.
Next the cotton had been graded
prac tically one-eighth of an inch long
err than 1 had anticipated. No one had
ever claimed more than one and one
eighth inches for the cotton sent me
from Mississippi, and here these
graders were giving me full one and
three-sixteenths. Full in the trade
means almost another sixteenth.
Maybe you do not know that every
sixteenth sends the price up by leaps
and bounds. In my case the length
of fiber got me 80 cents q pound for
my cotton.
This was the gratifying result Of
four years of hard work. The length
of the fiber had been standardized,
had been increased one-sixteenth of
an inch, the percentage of lint had
been increased from 20 to 33 per cent
and the cotton had been a fact be-
fore, although when I got it from
Mississippi 1t was already the earli-
est cotton grown commercially.
This means much to the farmers
of Georgia, for upon earliness depends
dustry in these days when the boil
weevil is sitting upon nearly every
stalk waiting for the next bloom"
During the last four years Mr..
Hunter has practically lived in the
cotton field, and in his effort to breed
variety of cotton best suited to
north Georgia has had the co-opera-
ton of his wife.
He has always been more or less a
pioneer at any job he undertakes. The
first advertisement he wrote after go
ing with the Lackawanna railroad
showed Mark Twain and a telegram
that Twain had sent to friend in
New York after his arrival at his
home in Elmira. This telegram read:
LEFT New York in a white duck
suit-and it's white yet"
1t was a new note in railroad ad-
vertising.
Mr.. Hunter was asked how a man
who had lived in Chicago and New
York and had been in the heart of
business could adapt himself to a
farmers life in north Georgia.
Man." he exclaimed, 81 live in the
best part of the best state in the
union. Take a look at the mountains
up there, and at the forests, and
you'll agree that they're just God
given. You'll see a cat summing it
self on the porch. One always is,
there are eight in all. My wife and
myself couldn't live without eight
cats, and how could we keep that
many in city apartment? She asked
me that question once. and told her
I wouldn't trade the waikiki from my
barn to the house for the whole of
Broadway.
Furthermore, Georgia is just be-
ginning to live. 1t will become the
greatest state in the union. 1t has
everything to make it that. It's peo
pie, have walked up. It's farmers have
thrown off the shackles of all-cotton.
It's mines, its fields, it's water power,
it's mills are just beginning to devel-
op. That Georgia will become the
greatest commonwealth in America is
not prophecy: it's certainty"