February, '14] HINDS: COUNTY BOLL WEEVIL CONTROL 65 



could have an opportunity to make any corrections which they de- 

 sired. 



President P. J. Parrott: The next paper will be presented by 

 Mr. W. E. Hinds on "County Organization in the Boll Weevil Cam- 

 paign." 



COUNTY ORGANIZATION IN THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE 



BOLL WEEVIL 



By W. E. Hinds, Auburn, Alabama 



The problem of controUing, or successfully minimizing injury by 

 the Mexican cotton boll weevil is no longer primarily either an entomo- 

 logical or an agricultural problem. For several years past we have 

 looked upon the campaign against the boll weevil as being a campaign 

 for good farming. In the minds of many, at least, the agricultural 

 changes which are taking place at the present time in the South, con- 

 stitute much more than an agricultural revolution. We are coming to 

 look upon the boll weevil as having brought some of the greatest bless- 

 ings that have come to the South in a generation. This is true because 

 the fight against the l)oll weevil has awakened the South to some of her 

 greatest needs and is making her break loose from some of her greatest 

 handicaps. Among these handicaps has been a one-crop system, and 

 that crop raised principally upon a system of advances by which the 

 crop has been mortgaged even before it is planted. The great mass of 

 dependent, illiterate black farmers of the South, indeed, present a prob- 

 lem to any propaganda for progressive agriculture. The boll weevil 

 is helping the South to see the folly of an all-cotton system and to 

 appreciate the absolute necessity of a more diversified agriculture. 

 The need for an increase of live stock production has been recognized 

 and we believe that within the next generation the South is destined to 

 become one of the greatest meat-producing sections of the United 

 States. 



Wherever it has gone, the boll weevil has helped to reduce the acre- 

 age in cotton, to reduce also the advances made upon the prospective 

 cotton crop and to increase the planting of corn and other food stuffs 

 and the production of live stock by w^hich the farmer may be assured 

 of a living in spite of the boll weevil. These are steps in the right 

 direction; but only a beginning in their general adoption has as yet 

 been made. 



The boll w^eevil has given to the South, and probably to the entire 

 United States, the Farm Demonstration Work, which has become of 

 inestimable value in its benefits to the most progressive and open- 



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