COTTON A COMMUNITY CROP 
One-Variety Communities Must be Recognized as the Basis of Production, in Order 
to Preserve and Utilize Superior Varieties of Cotton 
O. F. Coox 
Bureau of Plant Industry, U. 
S. Department of Agriculture 
RGANIZATION may be desir- 
() xi with any crop, but cotton 
has a special community feature, 
the product of many farms going 
to the same gin. The cotton industry 
should have been placed on a community 
basis when public gins supplanted the 
former system of private or plantation 
gins, but methods changed gradually 
and consequences were not considered. 
Ginning is done with less labor by the 
modern high-power equipment, but the 
public gin system has made it very diffi- 
cult to keep seed pure, or to have su- 
perior varieties in general cultivation. 
CONSEQUENCES OF THE PUBLIC GIN 
SYSTEM 
Improvement of varieties was more 
feasible under the old system of private 
gins because the careful planter could 
maintain uniform strains of cotton, 
by selecting the best individual plants, 
isolating their progenies, keeping the 
seed separate, and furnishing pure seed 
to stock other plantations, as the custom 
was. Present-day farmers very seldom 
practice individual plant selection, or 
maintain stocks of pure seed. Different 
kinds of cotton are grown in the same 
communities, the seed is mixed at the 
public gins, crossing takes place in the 
fields, and degeneration ensues. 
According to the general testimony 
of the cotton trade there has been a 
serious deterioration in the quality of 
the American cotton crop in recent 
decades, which can be understood when 
account is taken of the effects of mixing 
and crossing different varieties, and the 
general use of ordinary “‘gin-run”’ seed 
for planting. The system of plantation 
gins survived longer in the Sea Island 
districts of the Southeastern States and 
the lower Mississippi Valley, so that the 
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long-staple branch of the industry re- 
mained on a somewhat better footing 
until recent years. But with the boll- 
weevil invasion the dominance of short 
staple varieties and of the public gin 
system became complete. 
Though it would be considered foolish 
for a large grower having a private gin 
to plant several varieties and allow them 
to become mixed, this is essentially the 
procedure that is followed by members of 
cotton-growing communities. It is true 
that communities seldom own gins, but 
gins are supported by communities, and 
ginners as well as farmers would profit 
through improvement in yield, quality 
and market value of the crop. Better 
ginning could be done, and with less 
difficulty, if only one variety were 
handled, instead of many kinds. 
DETERIORATION OF VARIETIES THROUGH 
CROSSING 
The idea formerly entertained, that 
cotton is not cross-pollinated, or that 
crossing is very infrequent and not of 
practical importance in relation to seed- 
supplies, has proved to be erroneous. 
Cotton pollen is not blown by the wind, 
because the grains are sticky and ad- 
herent, but is carried regularly by bees 
or other insects that visit the flowers, 
so that varieties growing in neigh- 
boring fields are cross-pollinated, in ad- 
dition to the general crossing that takes 
place in fields where mixed seed is 
planted. No matter how good the 
original varieties may have been, a 
mixed stock becomes, in a few genera- 
tions, thoroughly miscellaneous and 
mongrelized, with many abnormal and 
infertile plants, very inferior to the 
parental types. 
The degeneration that results from 
crossing no doubt is the basis of the 
