SELF-HELP FOR COTTON 



lion Americans who depend directly on the cotton crop 

 for their living would obviously be better off. 



That is why the authorities at College Station, Texas, 

 where Killough is in charge of plant-breeding investiga- 

 tions, do not fire him as a crackpot. Rather, they are 

 encouraging him to develop varieties that produce less 

 lint, but bigger and better seeds. It is a drastic bio- 

 logical effort to help cotton after so many political helps 

 have failed. 



At least the idea makes sense, and the big, rawboned 

 Texan who is trying to make it work believes that it 

 can be done. If it seems to you a forlorn hope, recall 

 that every practical cotton man big planter, little 

 sharecropper, ginner, crusher, exporter agrees that the 

 Government's cotton programs have failed dismally. 

 In desperation, after fifteen years of "let Uncle Sam 

 do it," he is turning to some pretty strenuous self-help 

 methods. 



Plant-breeder Killough has been belaboring his crazy 

 notion since 1940. Like all good scientists he is ready 

 enough to tell what he has actually accomplished to 

 date. He is as shy as a wood thrush in talking about 

 what can still be done and what the outcome will be. 

 He has found "isolated" is the correct term six cotton 

 plants that if not strictly lintless can be honestly de- 

 scribed as semilint. Several of these produce more, 

 larger, heavier seed than the average. All of these se- 

 lected specimens reproduce these characteristics. 



39 



