The Mena weekly star., 1921-12-01
Polk COuItD Agricultural
 Notes
By c. w. BROYI.ES
 Farm Demonstrator

Farm Demonstrator lll
 Approximately 100000 Southern cotton growers have signed binding contracts for five years more, ac- cording to a report made by '. o' Moser. secretary of the American Cotton Growers Exchange before the annual meeting of the American Farm Bureau Federation at Atlanta last week He states that cotton is now haino marketed in Oklahoma and Texas at an average profit of Sl5O ,,e,,,ber above street buyers prices or at a grand total profit eXceealhg S15,000,000 for the membership.
 Cotton marketing organlz.atie9lls have already been completed, m IYe states and six more are under pro- cess of organization. yNlahohla, Texas, Mississippi and Arizona are selling their cotton this year ana nave a total cotton sign up of approx mately 100000 bales.
 Mir. Moser said, "Ihe bigness ot the undertaking has been the prinel- pal object in the minds of men slow to approve the plan and cooperate m it's execution. There IS a constantly smaller number of skeptics who ma Justification for withholding their ap- proval. and when these skeptles are pressed down to specify features in the plan which they cannot approve, they usually make something like the ] following argument;
 Farmers Sign.
 Farmers will not sign your con 1 tract. But this is refuted by the fact that more than one hundred thousand cotton growers have already done so in the SouthernEtates during the past year. no man familiar with the pro- | rress of the movement states doubt 1 but that there will be at least quar- ter of a million growers who will join the movement for selling their cotton thru the cooperative organizations | in the various states by the time the | 1922 crop comes into harvest.
 And then the skeptics say, Yes, 1 the farmers will sign the contract, | but a plan involving such tremendous sums of money can never be financed This objection has also fallen Hat since the prime bankers of the South, after careful study of the plan, have not only approved t, but are lending millions of dollars to cooperative cotton marketing associations, and the commercial paper of these asso- citations is eligible to rediscount by the Federal Reserve banks, since the War Finance Corporations have ex- tended credit in excess of twenty mill lion dollars to Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arizopa and Texas.
 Skeptics Wrong.
 "So the skeptics third objection was that the farmers would not deliver their cotton even tho it was under contract. But, in this respect, they have also made a poor guess. The experience of these associations show that the farmers have gone into these organizations in complete faith, and they are fulfilling their contract with out the necessity of legal procedure on the part of tho organization to compel them to do so.
 "The last line of reserve which the skeptics have is, that the buyers will not patronize your association.' But they have The largest and most satisfactory customers of the coop eratives are the most responsible and the best established of the large cot ton concerns. They not only do patronize the cooperative cotton ss- sociations, but they pay them 6 premium over what they pay street buyers, curb stone brokers, and f. o. b. men; and the reason they pay the premium to the cooperative is based upon a good and sufficient business principle
 At a meeting held at Blytheville Monday, November 28, at which time Clarence 0suley, former assistant secretary of the United States De ertment of Agriculture, and Dr. Bradford Knapp, dean of the Arkan- sis college of agricultuze,s discussed the marketing plans of the Arkansas Cotton Growers Co-Operative Asso- ciation, 2000 more bales of cotton were signed to tie pool and nearly
 100 growers pledged themselves to start an intensive campaign in Mis- slssippi county. The Arkansas Ga
 zette in it's account of the meeting states:
 "That the eopIe of Mississippi county have an opportunity to add more than a million dollars to their income each year was an assertion 1 by which Mir. Ousley stirred up his audience.
 Your crop is more than 50,000 bales annually" he said. "In Texas the Co-Opelative Cotton Growers Asso- citation is earning it's members about SEQ per hale over the local market : quotations On a similar basis Mis- sissinpi coHnty's cotton would be 1 worth o million doilare mora fn fha i pool than out of it."
 At this point one of the farmers in the audience rose to add to the state ment. The farmer said that he was member of the Mississippi state isrowers' organization and that he had this morning received returns from tic association on 50 bales of cotton forwarded to it. He produced his record sheets to show that he had received mo,e than $46 per bale on his cotton above street quotations on the same shipment. Several Arkan- sas growers joined the Mississippi state organ zation before the Arkan- sas campaign was started and will be transferred immediately after the first of January. The Mississippi as- sociarion is operating under the same contract that the Arkansas growers have adopted and both organizations later will be federated under the American Cotton Growers Exchange. Pointing to tho success of the Tex as organization Mr. Gusley said that cooperative marketing under the Texas type of contract is now a dem- onstrated success in four states. He Is uGt afvoeaffpc- n ,,n.sy t,,sf,~iad r,Io,,