The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-10-28
By ROLAND THOMAS (SpeciRI to The Age-HernId)


 from little acorns grow, and great events spring from seemingly trivial causes. superfluous fraction of an inch on the end of an otherwise pret- ty woman's nose Is much more tragic than several million miles of inter stellar space, and the mere fact that the seed of Gossypium wears a tuft of long white whiskers on it's chin, where the seeds of it's sprucer cous- ins Althea, Abutilon and Hibiscus go clean shaven, accounts for the course of empire, high explosives and the appearance on the walls of our eco homie Troy of a chorus of he-Cas- sandras.
 Gossypium is cotton. And cotton has made another short crop. It's price is once more flirting with the 30-cent level, which threatens a par adoXical result. The pockets of the southern farmer are likely to over flow with cash, but his whole eco- homie domicile may come tumbling down about his ears, according to the prophets.
 Affairs have reached a pass, these prognosticators point out, where American cotton costs more than for eign consumers can afford to pay. They will therefore seek and get re- lief by obtaining their cotton from y of unquestioned predominance the American staple will find itself only humble and chastened competitor in the worldwide export and import markets. just as American wheat, that other market waif, does.
 Recently at the imperial conference in London Lord Derby predicted time to come when the English spin ners will obtain all their own raw material inside the British empire, having become independent of the United States. These spinners are the largest single group of cotton users anywhere. They operate 59,- 100000 of the 153.000,000 cotton spin dies in the world. For 25 years they have taken from us annually between 3,000,000 and 100000 bales, some thing like three-quarters of all Brit ish cotton imports and at least 25 per cent of our normal crop of 12, 900 900 to 14,000,000 bales. To lose the trade of this regular customer would involve readjustments amount ing to revolution. It would be as grave a matter as the corner saloon keeper would find it to have his most reliable Old Soak move out of the neighborhood or take ride in hearse.
 U. s. May Lose Supremacy.
 Still more recently, and in comment  E. Bartlett, Jr, president of the New York Cotton Exchange, declared the succession of short crops and high prices entails consequences which foreign nations have been quicker to appreciate than we ourselves have. There is, he said, real danger that the world will be left without any cotton reserve in 1924. and unless we solve the problem of restoring our cotton crop to it's normal volume America may lose her proud and profitable position as the leading cot ton producing country of the world. Then, dropping the Cassandra role to take the part of Cato, he let the cat out of the bag.
 "The boil weevil," he warned, must be destroyed before the boil weevil destroys one of our greatest natural assets
 Gosspyium and Anthonomus gran chin and a little six legged, long nosed, gray brow Mexican insect which self-respecting sparrow wouldn't take a second look at-have got into one of those foreign en- tanglements Washington warned against. The weevil first flew or was carried across the Rio Grande to Brownsville in 1899. Since then he has successfully moved up his forces, dug in and advanced fresh outposts till now he holds prostrate under his tiny beali the prosperity of the whole rich cotton belt, with 30,000,000 to 40,000,000 cultivated and 450,000, 900 potentially arable acres
 He has put an end to the culti- vation of the most famous and pre- cfous of all American cottons Sea Island, of which the crop has de- clined from the record yield of 122, 900 bales in 1911 to bare 4,000 bales in 1920. He has made less mur- derous but still disastrous inroads into the production of the almost equally prized blenders" and rivers of the Mississippi delta, those silky, lustrous staples which, length for length, are the strongest spinning cotton In the world.
 Disregarding these fancy" cottons, considering only the run of the crop, the weevil damage according to offi- c!al reports of the Department of Agriculture, amounted in 1920 to 1895 per cent of the crop; in 1921 to S4 per cent, and this year to 24 per cent. Thirty-four per cent of | the 1921 crop was 6,277 ,000 bales, l worth at the average price for the l year in the neighborhood of $500,- l 000,000.
 Cotton and the picturesque but | commercially negligible hollyhock
 
 and your first cousin. The character istic which elevates cotton on a l pedestal as infinitely the most i'm | portant vegetable fibre In the world Is the jungle of hairs on the seeds | They range in length from few | eights of an inch to almost three | inches in extreme instances. You dis cover the secret of their usefulness | by putting one under a microscope, when you find that the fibre has a spiral twist in 1t, making it look somewhat like flattened and twist ed length of fire hose. When sep arate flores are laid beside each other these twists engage and make | 1t possible to spin strong thread. So-called silk cottons or flosses, like kapok. lack the twist, cannot be spun satisfactorily, and live exist ence out ingloriously, as pillow stuff | fling instead of experiencing high ad- venture as sash cords, sheeting or l turkey red calicoes for the heather. A Capr1cious Money Crop.
 Away down south" is the land of cotton. There it Is the king and overlord of agriculture. It is all the eggs in the only basket and the prin- cipal money crop"-as indeed in normal years it Is the outstanding cash crop of the whole country. And 1t is a capricious money crop. One year 1t floods the south with cash, while another the long suffering bankers are carrying the planters l grocery bills. To grow it in the | hope of permanent affluence in on a par with the conservative enterprise of playing the races for the family | bread and butter. Yet just as the husbands or lovers of baneful beau ties have been known to yearn for their smiles through all disillusion- ments, so year after year and gen. eration after generation the south continues to plant cotton.