The Cotton Situation
and Program for Dealing With It
By B.W. Kilgore,
Director, N.C. Exp. Station and Extension Service and Treasure, N.C. Cotton
Association
The South and North Carolina particularly, wrought
wonderfully well during the war period. Large crops, except cotton, have been
made, particularly food crops. The cotton crops of the country for the four
years of the war—1915 to 1918—were 11,700,000 bales, 11,302,000, 11,450,000 and
11,192,000, or an average of 11,411,000 bales, against the four pre-war crops
of 1911-14 of 16,135,000, 14,156,000, 13,703,000, 15,693,000, or an average of
14,922,000 bales, which is an average of 3,511,000 bales more annually prior
to, than during the war period.
The acreage of the last year was but 942,000 less than for
1914 when the bumper crop of 16,135,000 bales was produced. The low production
for the past four years has been due mainly to bad seasonal conditions in Texas
and Oklahoma. Good weather rains already have been had in these states, and
with the same acreage as in 1918, near 36,000,000—and good seasons, a crop well
nigh as large as our largest can and likely would be made, which is far beyond
what there are any reasons to think the world will consume.
Big Crop, Low Price
Our bumper cotton crop of 16,000,000 bales in 1914 brought
$800,000,000 and our 11,500,000 bale crop of 1917 brought the South
$1,600,000,000, or twice as much as the bumper crop. We know what this
means—“Big crop, low price.” Cotton at present prices is at, if not below, the
cost of production, and not an inconsiderable number of North Carolina farmers
have cotton of two years on hand.
It would seem that the world needs and will consume at cost
of production, plus a fair profit, the small crop of 1918, especially as this
is one of the four small crops in succession, the average for the four years
being 11,411,000 bales or 14,000,000 less than the four year war period than
for the four year pre-war period.
To Make This
Effective
What can be done to make this effective?
1.
A well-defined co-operative program on the part
of the banker, the merchant and the farmer for holding and selling should bring
results.
2.
Along with the movement to enable the farmer,
the merchant and the banker, or whoever has cotton, to hold it till the right
time to sell, must go a program to house the staple.
3. What is perhaps more important when measured in
terms of its effect upon the future of our farming industry, is a plan for
preventing the production of a cotton crop this year greater than the world
will require. A reduction in acreage of from one-fifth to one-third has been
suggested as a method of doing this. This would mean for North Carolina in
round numbers, a million acres instead of a million and a half of cotton. This
would leave a half million acres heretofore devoted to cotton available for
food, feed and soil-improving crops.
Better Land for
Cotton
Cotton should likely, in most cases, be put on the better
land, including some at least of the land planted to soil improving crops
during the past year. It should be fertilized with the view of economy so as to
meet the needs of the land thus used and the crop, and increasing the acreage
production and reducing the cost so as to meet the almost certain lower price
for cotton next fall.
Another matter of serious concern is the price of
fertilizers. The prices are the highest we have ever known, and while the
cotton grower cannot afford to allow his acreage yields to decline, fertilizers
must be used to meet the needs of the soil and the crop.
Food and Feed Crops
It will be easily agreed that all reduction in cotton should
go into food and feed crops and pasture in an effort to make all the food and
feed for the State on the farms of the State, so as to save transportation
charges and intervening profits, to make easy the holding of cotton, tobacco,
peanuts and other money crops, and to encourage and support our growing
livestock industry—beef cattle, hogs, poultry, sheep and dairy cows for the
family cow, our dairies and creameries and for our new cheese industry—these,
together with our farm and townspeople and our animals, make a practically sure
market for all the food and feed crops and roughage that can be grown.
Entitled to Better
Living Conditions
Finally, we must have in mind as a whole people a
readjustment of our wage and living scale. We should not want to go back to the
old conditions as regards these. Cotton, peanuts, tobacco and other money and
general crops in the whole South have been produced with low priced labor—with
much child labor unpaid or underpaid. These crops have been sold to the world
on a basis of this kind of labor and we have bought products from other parts
of the country on basis of a higher income and a higher living scale than our own,
greatly to the detriment of our own standard of living as a section.
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