CHAPTER XV 



THE COTTON CROP 



THE cotton crop is the chief of all the export crops 

 from the United States. It is the one crop that 

 keeps the balance of exchange in favor of this 

 country, and is the one crop in the world of which we 

 have the practical monopoly. Other countries have tried in 

 vain to produce cotton on a scale sufficient to compete 

 with this country. And yet there is no crop grown in this 

 country the cultivation of which has felt the march of 

 improvement so little as the cotton crop. Its continuous 

 cultivation on the same land, year after year, by the aid 

 of commercial fertilizers has led to the exhaustion of the 

 soil over large areas, the washing of the clean cultivated 

 lands into hideous guUies, and the hopeless ruin of thou- 

 sands of acres of fertile uplands in the South. 



It was long assumed that while a rotation of crops was 

 all right for the grain-growing sections North and West,- 

 the cotton crop was the one crop that would not fit into a 

 systematic rotation. The fact is that there is no crop 

 grown that so readily responds to a good rotation of 

 crops, and none with which good systematic farming will 

 give better returns to the cultivator. With the system at 

 present used in most parts of the cotton belt the crop is 

 grown at too large an expenditure of human labor and too 



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