Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 280, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1917 — America's Wonderful Cotton Crop [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

America's Wonderful Cotton Crop

* Government experimenters have found it has high food value for both man and beast :: A gold mine for the South, it has become one of this nation s most profitable “war brides”

YOU can eat cotton" has become the slogan of the forces engaged in enthroning still more firmly the,.South s chief agricultural product. The South has been thrilled with the vi'sion of a farm crop which cannot only clothe the world and provide the base for huge quantities of powerful explosives but can supply food as well. Everyone knows the important part cotton is playing in the making of the high explosives needed to win titanic battles on land and sea. In recent years an ever increasing number of important uses have been found for cottonseed and other waste. Cottonseed meal has been used for i years in the preparation of food for animals and jin the making of cooking compounds, but experiments made recently in Oklahoma and in other parts of the South have demonstrated that cottonseed meal when properly combined with other materials makes an acceptable flour, and can also serve as a substitute for meats, owing to its richness in protein. The hulls are now being used in preparing feed for live-stock, and are consumed in enormous quantities. Another by-product which is serving the country i well at this time is linters, the short lint removed ■ from the seed in the course of its preparation for eating purposes. Linters are almost pure cellulose, which is the base of one of the high explosives used in most of the armies and navies of the world. And pound for pound, cottonseed will provide as much lard as any hog, the seed from a bale of cotton yielding as much high-grade lard as five average hogs. The enormous increase in the demand for cotton, combined with conditions in America and other parts of the world which have reduced the available supply, assures the South a period of prosperity. When newspapers printed stories recently regarding the spectacular feat of cotton in climbing to 27 cents, the highest point since 1871, they gave but a hint of the prosperity which has been brought to the South *by its war bride.

Almost everyone recalls the slump in • cotton which followed the opening of the war and how, with cotton selling as low*as five and seven cents a pound, the South arose as one man in an organized “Buy-a-bale-of-cotton” campaign which enabled the cotton producers to tide their industry over the financial doldrums which resulted from the chaos of war. The manner in which cotton rebounded from this low mark makes it one of the huskiest war brides in America, with the possible exception of the munitions and allied industries. When cotton had reached 18 cents last year there were certain optimists who were predicting 25-cent cotton, and they did not have to wait long for that miracle to come to pass. When King Cotton passed the 27-cent mark recently it marked the highest level of prices since the days immediately following the close of the Civil war, when *" Southern planters were able to obtain almost any price they asked for their cotton. It is believed that this prosperity will continue long after peace is restored. Until the world’s greatly depleted supply of cotton is replenished at least there should be no material change in the situation. The latest available estimates as to this year’s crop show an increase of approximately

200,000 bales over the crop of hist year, but this is 4,500.000 bales less than the recordbreaking crop of three years ago. Two new conditions in American agricultural life are responsible in the main for the failure of this year’s cotton crop to meet or even pass the record of 1914. Perhaps the one felt more commonly throughout the South has been the acute shortage of labor, due to the fact that many thousands of negroes have been enticed North into the munitions plants and factories by the lure of higher wages. It is obvious that any general attempt to increase the

cotton acreage would have resulted in an even more serious predicament for the cotton planters during the summer season. Another reason for the decline in production has been the strong pressure brought to bear upon the South to practice diversified farming. This has resulted in some states in a considerable decrease in the cotton acreage in order that more corn, wheat, oats, hay and other food crops might be grown, though these conditions are more or less local. |The government is engaged in a campaign to interest the South in feeding Itself, and many thousands of farmers who planted cotton almost exclusively have embarked in diversified farming in the last two years. The idea back of the diversified farming movement in the South is to make cotton the moneymaking crop, and to utilize corn and other staple farm crops to pay the expenses of operating the farm and to enable the South to produce enough foodstuffs to feed itself. Thus,'a tenant farmer who has 40 acres in cotton would, provided he practiced diversified farming successfully, make from $2,500 to $5,000 a year, all kom the sale of his cotton. This would be net profit, but would not, of course, include the increased value given the land through the enrichment of the soil by the crop-rotation plan. The average tenant farmer who practices crop rotation well can double his cotton production within two or three years, it has been demonstrated.

This gives food for speculation as to the possibility which would follow the general adoption of crop diversification throughout the South. The average tenant farmer can grow barely more than one bale of cotton to the acre, though with proper farming and. fertilization he can Increase this yield to three bales an acre, according to farniirig experts. However, not all of the Southern cotton fields are soil Impoverished and It would be doing the better-class cotton planter an injustice to say that by proper farming he could double or triple his cotton crop. Of the 35,000,000" acres planted in cotton this year, a large percentage of the acreage could be so increased in fertility as to double the yield by 1919, provided crop rotation was followed out along the most modern lines. With better farming the South will thus be able to make its 35,000,000 acres or more do the work of from 45,000,000 to 50,000,000 acres under the old plan. Any Important reduction in acreage, therefore, is not to be looked upon with alarm for there is certain to be a consequent increase In production, barring unforeseen weather calamities. To this increased production must be added the millions of dollars added to the wealth of the South by the other\farm products grown In increased quantities. K ' The slogan, "The South Must Feed Itself,” is the outgrowth of this campaign for crop rotation as practiced In the North and West. The realization of this dream would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealth of the

South alone, for almost all of the states will become producers instead of consumers. . Despite the enviable climate and the good soil possessed by Alabama there are many counties which spend one million dollars or more each year in importing outside foodstuffs. With the practice of diversified farming it will be possible for every county In the state to export as much corn and other farm crops as it now Imports. Some observers have taken the view, especially since the entry of the United States into the war has resulted In" increased activity in the diversified farming campaign, that a serious blow is intended at King Cotton, but such is not the case. The whole idea of the campaign is not to uproot the chief Southern crops for the Northern crops, but to rotate such crops as have soilenriching values, so as to enable the Southern soil to produce even greater cotton crops. Because of its revolutionary character, the diversified farming campaign has not made much progress except In Alabama, Georgia and neighboring states, which have been adding tens of milliops of dollars I to the value of their farm products each year in recent years. When the war sent corn and wheat to skyhigh prices along with cotton, it proved much easier to enlist the sympathies of the Southern farmer, and many thousands of fanners 1 are making more money growing ’high-priced corn and wheat thap they did in growing cotton. This is due chiefly to the relief given the soil by crop rotation, and sueh.conditiAns will be even more common next season, when the qoii rebuilding process adopted byvnature is given time to get well underway. Impetus has alone been given crop diversification by the shortage of The most of these crops reqtilre less labor than cotton and ban be tended more efficiently than cotton.

COTTON COMPRESS