The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1922-11-10
HIGHER PRICES FOR COTTON


sometime ago the Press and Banner
stated that higher prices were not
only inevitable for the present crop
but tnat cotton would continue to
command higher and higher prices
as the years advanced. We sought to
show, as is evident to the man who
thinks, that the price paid for the
raw material has little to do with the
cost Of the manufactured cotton
goods which we buy.
The Progressive Farmer in its is
sue of this week discusses these sub
jects and arrives at much the same
conclusions. A reading of its edito-
rial we believe will prove of inter-
est and value to the readers of this
paper, and we are therefore repro
ducing the editorial. Discussing the
prices of cotton, tobacco and pea
nuts it is said:
Cali three crops have heretofore
been made on a cheap, slave-labor ba-
sis, with no provision for modern
standards of living. A great multi
tude of negroes with cabins for hon.
es, rags for clothes, and cornbread
and fat meat for diet, have made
these crops on a cheap labor basis
also keeping their children out of
school in order to increase the over
production of these crops-and low
prices have been the inevitable con-
sequence of cheap labor and child
labor.
Moreover, our Southern white
farm workers have had their own liv-
ing standards lowered by having to
work in competition with cheap ne
gro labor and have not come to ex-
pect the comforts and conveniences
that farm workers elsewhere enjoy.
As the Manufacturers Record of
Baltimore said recently:
Following the Civil War, which
came about largely as result of the
economic theories developed by the
raising of cotton by slave labor, the
South was in deep and desperate pow
erty, and the financial and cotton
forces of the world were then con-
centrated to keep cotton at price
which enslaved the cotton growers,
white and blacks, to a far greater
extent than the slavery of the blacks
prior to 1860. Hundreds of thous-
ands of women work in the cotton
fields, hundreds of thousands of chill
dren are without education, because.
they, too, must work in the cotton
fields. Cotton has been raised thru
the slavery not only of the white and
black men, but of the white and
black women and children.
"Now, however, these conditions
are changing. Both white and colored
: farm workers are demanding higher
living standards. The excessive pro-
portion of negroes is being reme-
died by negro emigration to the
North. Moreover, this emigration. is
likely to be accelerated now be-
cause our new immigration laws are
shutting out cheap European labor.
Consequently mines, factories, and
railways in the North are going to
call for more and more Southern ne
groes. Instead of having the negro's
cheap labor congested and concen-
trated in the South, it will become
distributed all over the country.
"In the case of cotton, the boil
weevil presents another reason why
prices must advance. Cotton can new
er again be grown as cheaply as in
the past. 1t used to be called fool
proof crop. Almost anybody could
grow it. Like mule, it would stand
a shameful lot of abuse and neglect.
But the boil weevil has changed all
that. Growing cotton proftably un-
der boil weevil conditions calls for
brains and eternal vigilance. Shift
less, slipshod, 'don't-care' farmers
and laborers must find other work.
"The consequence is that cotton
prices are bound to go up enough to
pay for the better class of farm