The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1921-07-15
MAKING COTTON PAN OUT.

Under the headline wheat Pan
ming Out Again" the New York Her
aid gives us the following informa
ton and suggestions:
"The American farmer like othe,
producers is discovering that more
normal prices do not spell perditior
when his costs are more normal. In
the last crop year he objected vigor.
onsly to selling his wheat, for exam
pie, at what it would fetch in fall.
ing market when it had cost him SO
much to raise it. And pretty nearly
all other producers were in the same
boat, expressing the same dread OF
imminent shipwreck. e..
"There. were farmers in numbers
who said, and probably with truth,
that the buyers were not giving them
the chance to take out of their wheat
of last year nearly as much as they
had put into it. They also declared
with some strong language that if
they could only get the necessary
bank loans or farm credits or Gov
ernment help of some kind they
would hang on to their crops until
they got the prices that would show
them a clean profit on their high
production costs; whether it meant
waiting a year or five years. y
"But if they could have commanded
the total credits Of the country that
were available for all other purposes
the farmers might have stuck to
that wheat crop of 1920 till the crack
of doom and there would have been
no, market for; it at war imitation
prices unless they had stopped rails
ing new wheat. And the American
farmers do not do that; they do not
deliberately starve out the American
public. Their business is raising
wheat, and they raise wheat.
"If the American farmers had not
let go of their 1920 wheat, as they
finally did let 60 Of it, they would
not now be selling their 1921 crops
freely, as the harvests of the early
wheat belt are now selling. They
would not be making on their lQw
prices for 1921 wheat the profits they
are now making--profits they la,
mented they could not make on the
high cost Of wheat even in the higher
selling markets.
"Wheat from the early harvests of
this year, as a matter of fact, is ar
irving regularly at the primary
points at about the rate of 100000
bushels week. In a few days as
-nore crops are harvested it will be
many more\ millions Of bushels a
week. The farmers who are glad to
sell it at the present low prices are
not going to the poorhouse; they are
laying off their bank loans and doing
their annual shopping, which they
could not do last year.
'In the granger territory, from
which the winter wheat already is on
the way to the consumer, there is, in
fact, a general cheerfulness. Plenty
OF. labor and no longer at war mum.
tion factory wages, a broad market
and fairly steady market, an abund'
ance of supplies that are needed fo,
the; farm and at prices that are moi
musderous; cheaper clothes, cheaper
gasolene, cheaper bank interest-al
this met out of the proceeds Of hi:
lower price but lower cost wheat
again makes the farmers life worth
living. When everything else get!
similarly readjusted it will make
everybody's life worth living"
We bell, We that the editorial quot
ed contains some sound sense whicl
might be applied by the cotton farm
ers in this section. Certainly the far
.mers who are producing the preseh
crop Of cotton may not expect high
er, prices for it than the price nov
obtainable, if when it is ready TO
market there is so large part o