4 CIRCULAR NO. 130, BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY. 



sidered. The moist climate and luxuriant growth of the plants 

 increase the danger of weevil injury. Measures of protection, if 

 they are to be at all effective, must be enforced by the concerted action 

 of whole communities, and community agreements are also necessary 

 in order to maintain the selection and preserve the purity of superior 

 types of long-staple cotton. Finally, there is special need with long- 

 staple cottons that commercial quantities of uniform high-grade fiber 

 be produced in each community in order to market the crop to the 

 best advantage. The individual farmer w^orking alone is usually 

 unable to secure more than a small part of the advantage that could 

 be obtained if whole communities of farmers would unite in measures 

 of improvement.^ 



INCREASING COST OF LABOR, 



The higher prices that have ruled in the cotton market in recent 

 years do not mean that there has been a corresponding increase in 

 the profits of large farms or plantations. The cotton crop still has 

 to be picked by hand. Hopes of cotton-picking machines are not yet 

 realized. The scarcity and higher cost of farm labor in the South 

 is one of the general factors of cotton production that has changed 

 rapidly in the last few years. The cost of picking has almost 

 doubled in five years in some parts of Texas, and many laborers 

 have been attracted from Louisiana. The rapid increase of city 

 and town populations in the South has also drawn heavily, and espe- 

 cially upon the more intelligent and efficient part of the laboring 

 population of the farming districts, for the towns afford more regu- 

 lar employment as well as higher wages. 



With some of the laboring population increased wages mean a 

 still further decline in efficiency, because a living is assured by fewer 

 days of work. Instead of working four or five days in a week 

 thej^ may " get along " by working only two or three days. 



The breaking up of large estates for sale or rent to small farmers 

 is another factor in reducing the supply of labor available for the 

 large planter, for the small farmers can live from their own land 

 and are no longer in the market as general laborers. It is useless 

 for large landowners to plant cotton unless pickers can be had when 

 the harvest season arrives. Miscalculations on this point occasion 

 losses of millions of dollars every year. 



Thus, we have in the labor conditions alone a reason why it is 

 becoming more difficult to maintain cotton production by hired labor 

 on a large scale, or the plantation system. The fact that the labor 

 demands of the cotton crop are not distributed regularly through the 

 season means that farming on the basis of cotton alone is uneconomic 



1 Cook, O. F. Cotton improvement on a community basis. U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture, Yearbook, 1011, p. 307-410, 1012. 

 ICir. 130] 



