142 Missouri Agncultural Report. 



of the crop. Its adaptability to our soil and climate has been 

 questioned, but the fact that our yield per acre is greater than 

 any other cotton state, that the quality of our lint is finer than 

 any other district, and that we are too far north to be seriously 

 menaced by the cotton-boll weevil, that when seed from duly accli- 

 mated plants are planted we are as sure of a crop as any other sec- 

 tion of cotton-growing territory should be evidence sufficient that 

 we are not giving the attention to cotton production in Missouri 

 that the greatest of staple crops deserves. 



"Everybody talks about the south's supremacy in the world's 

 cotton production, but few people quite understand what this 

 supremacy really means. It is worth more to the southland, more 

 to this country, than would be the possession in the south of all 

 the gold and silver mines in the world. If nature had put in your 

 section every ounce of gold and silver that exists in all the earth, 

 it would not have done one-half so much for the real wealth of the 

 south, the prosperity of its people and its influence in the world 

 of affairs as it did when it gave to the south the power to monopo- 

 lize the cotton trade. Within the last few years, since you have 

 been getting a fairly decent price for your cotton, it brings to 

 your farmers about $1,000,000,000 a year and three-fourths of 

 this comes to you from the north and from Europe. Your cotton 

 is like a great funnel, through which in effect, all the gold and 

 silver annually mined on earth is poured into the south. Even 

 then Europe has to pick up an additional $100,000,000 or more 

 and send to you to settle your annual bill for cotton. The gold 

 output of the world is less than $475,000,000, while Europe pays 

 you a bill of $550,000,000 to $600,000,000 for your cotton. 



"Civilization is more nearly staked on cotton than on any 

 other one crop. You could find new foodstuffs if wheat and corn 

 were destroyed, for there are other crops which could take their 

 places ; but man has not yet found any other substitute for cotton. 

 This country would be bankrupt without it. If we did not get 

 back from Europe the $500,000,000 to $600,000,000 which annually 

 comes through the sale of cotton, the balance of trade would be 

 against us; panics would rule the land and industrial depression 

 would be the order of the day. The destruction of any one cotton 

 crop would bring on a panic in this country, as well as in the great 

 textile centers of Europe. 



"However, cotton, royal crop that it is, whose empire sways 

 the world, is a crop which the south could abandon with less loss 



