The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1920-01-07
WHO is GETTING THE BENEFIT OF HIGH
PRICES FOR COTTON?

Manufacturers Record, Baltimore, Md.)
MIR. Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad, apparently has in his office some one
who is supposed to interpret and comment upon edi-
tcrials, we presume for Mr.. Wizards enlighten-
ment, for we have received from him or his office
two copies of a memorandum of this kind in which
Mr.. NJ. B. Wild in his report to Mr.. Willard, in
forms him that the Manufacturers Record seems to
be very well balanced on all things except cotton,
II, the of this memorandum he says:
The insinuation that the Federal Reserve Board
brought about the recent virtual panic in New
York, from which few rich men suffered and few
professionals, is just the kind Of ammunition the
Bolsheviks use in their endeavors to overthrow So
cal order
The trouble with Nlr. Wild, and apparently with
Mr.. Willard, since in sending this to the Manufac
turers Record without comment he seems virtually
have accepted that view, is that they shut their
eyes to facts. No one has to be very familiar with
the conditions in New York to know that the stock
market is the football of many Wall Street gamb-
iers who use thing and another to advance
depress the price Of stocks according to whether
they buyers sellers Of stocks These specu
lators milk the public "shear the lambs"
you may care to put it. Money is loaned freely
til stocks boosted and the insiders sell OUT then
some plan is devised to tighten the money market
or to advance call loans, and the public rushes to
sell. The spectators buy in at low price the
stocks they sold at high figure Then money again
becomes easy, stocks boosted, the public rushes
to buy and the insiders unload Soon the money
market becomes tight, stocks tumble and the public
sells at low price to the insiders and ad infni
tum. We have never found it wise to suppress in
formation, and Mr. Wild's suggestion that the pub
lcation Of such statements is Bolshevistic in its
tendency is indicative Off the narrowness of his
vision. In further discussion of the views of the
Manufacturers Record he said:,
The views of this paper on cotton and cotton
prices and the action of the Federal Reserve Board
in relation to them would be much sounder if it
Gould show that the genuine cotton growers both
need and getting prices for their product that
from 200 to 800 per cent higher than pre-war
prices. The fact is, however, that the genuine cot
ton grower is securing but small share of these
gigantic price increases and the recent action of the
Federal Reserve Board both as to cotton and all
other commodities had no other purpose than to
check the spectators who reaping the main
heneAt from the increased prices"
In this statement Mr.. Wild displays depth of
ignorance which cannot be reached by any plumb
line We hope Mr. Willard knows little more.
The cotton growers getting the present high
prices, and they do need them. The bear specula-
tors who have gsmbled for years and leached the
life-bood of the Southern growers have now been
caught in their own trap, and they are trying to
move Heaven-no, not Heaven, but earth and hell
TO wriggle out of the steel trap which is finally
closing around them. They are in wise, which
daily closes in them, and that wise is the econo-
. mic law Of supply and demand which, despite the
effort of the cotton bears to break down. is fixing
the price of cotton.
Thecotton growers for so years virtually starved,
ers white and black. The average yield of cotton
on Southern farms about six bales per farm.
At 10 cents pound this meant $500 year as the
gross income of a farmer and his wife and children
because he was only able to raise cotton at these
prices by having his wife and children work in the
cotton field. The wife should have been at home,
the children should have been in school, The curse
of iteracy has been upon the South because OF the
curse of cotton fastened upon this section by the
cotton after the war. With growers income of
$500 year plus small amount received from
seed, one-third to one-half of this amount had to
be paid for rent of the land and out of the pttance
left these tenant farmers by the hundreds of thou
sands had to support their families.
The Course Of God" might well rest upon every