Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 137 



He replied that he would not. Now, you are all familiar with those 

 illustrations which purport to be maps of Missouri, with the south- 

 east section, cut off and stuck up in the corner as if it were in the 

 way or paper was too expensive to place it where it belonged. 

 Those are no more maps of Missouri than a map of the United 

 States would be complete with Florida or Texas cut off and stuck 

 up in the corner. 



This Southeast Missouri is in many respects a wonderful land. 

 Besides a five-million-dollar cotton crop, it produces the luscious 

 watermelon, which has made Scott and Dunklin counties famous. 

 In fact, these Southeast Missouri lands are so fertile and adapt- 

 able to the successful growing of so great a variety of crops that 

 I am tempted to digress from my particular subject. 



Is Missouri interested in cotton, growing? No, not to the extent 

 that it should be. Listen! "The entire civilized world today wears 

 clothing made of cotton, and nearly, if not quite, every civilized 

 nation of the world has its cotton factory; but there is only one 

 small section of the globe that furnishes this fiber in abundance, 

 and that is the southern states of America. All the world is de- 

 pendent upon the south. For cotton is the king of clothing, hence 

 the king of commerce, and the south is the kingdom of the king 

 who levies tribute of the world, and all the nations of the earth 

 make obeisance to him. Cotton is today the friend of the poor, 

 the luxury of the rich. It is made into cloth so coarse that it sells 

 for a few cents a yard. It is made into fabrics so fine and so beau- 

 tiful that it can hardly be told from silk, and so heavy and so thick 

 that experts can barely distinguish it from wool. It is made into 

 rope and cord so strong that it is almost the equal of flax or hemp, 

 and into thread so fine that one pound will reach more than a hun- 

 dred miles. Every year manufacturers discover new ways of pre- 

 paring it, and every year the demand for it increases, and the 

 world, it seems, cannot have enough of it. In recent years its by- 

 products have become a food for man, beast and plant, the possi- 

 bilities of which are not yet thoroughly understood. From the 

 Arctic to the Torrid zone our clothes are made of it, our books and 

 papers are printed on it, and if, through some calamity, we should 

 lose all goods made entirely or partly of cotton, and if all people 

 should be thrown out of employment whose occupation is, in any 

 way, dependent upon it — whether in the cultivation, the manufac- 

 ture or the commerce — the civilized world would be all but naked, 



