Arizona republican., 1921-02-19

learned how to produce a rare and
 valuable commodity with a certainty
 which is possible only on irrigated
 lands. They know that the market
 will come back and that markets can
 be made. Just to show that long staple
 cotton can be used for something be-
 sides auto tires, leading citizens of
 Phoenix are sporting suits and shirts of long staple cotton. The present weaving machinery is not adapted to
 handling the long staple stuff, but thaa
 is detail which will be attended to.
 The important fact is that this cot
 ton when woven will be distinct and valued addition to dress and suit fab-
 rics and woven goods of all kinds. It
 will be almost impossible to wear Y out, a thought that suggests good clothes for the young people. 1t has a strength, when woven, equal to 300 pounds to the inch of width.
 Of course the farmer and those who are tehind his credit are feeling a little discouraged. They have paid I cents per pound to pick the cotton and l s130 per hundred for ginning. As 1 three fourths of the pick is seed and | only one-fourth is cotton, this brings up the picking and ginning expense to 1 21 cents per pound for the market cot ton. The thousands of Mexicans who i do this picking and work the land have got theirs in cash and are in Mexico and en route there. The cotton waits. Yet all this is but a passing phase and maybe very healthy one. The farming of the irrigated lands on the Salt river valley, as elsewhere, is an assured and highly successful indus | try if they do not figure the cotton in at all. The farmer has absolute con- l trol of all the water that he needs for i his crops. He is not dependent on the Tai 1auts vesting as long as the sun keeps shin 1 ing. This water supply costs him less | than S4 per acre and it will be prac- l tically free to him as soon as the irri- i gation system is paid for.
 1 There are 220.oo0 acres under the ] Roosevelt dam system in the Salt river valley. The land needs only water i and a reasonable crop rotation to pro- duce regularly and abundantly without 1 fertilizer. Aside from cotton, which | became an obsession, the successful crops are alfalfa. dairy products, wheat, barley and citrus fruits. There is no l boil weviI. no pink cotton worm, no l cotton pests of any kind, and except 1 for this cotton stagnation at the mo-
 ment, there is market at once for all 1 that can be raised For Arizona is a mining state and with few other con suming industries and neighbors.
 Dwight B. Heard, who farms about ] 1000 acres near Phoenix, is not at all i discouraged.
 The growing of Pima cotton is 8 l successful and permanent industry iu the Salt river valley" he says. 'ft can- no be grown so we'll anywhere else and It is a staple that will be highly ap- preciated by the public at large as soon as it becomes better known. Our peo- pie have rushed in and grown a croI ahead of the real market for ii. We will create that market, or rather the public will do so for us
 "Our farmers put so per cent of oul irrigated land into Pima cotton last year. If the automobile tire people had kept on buying at high speed and ! there had been no extra importation oi Egyptians we would perhaps have dis posed of the T5,0O0 bales we produced
 and the lesson would not have been St 1 severe on us.
 Tn the excitement caused by the