SELF-HELP FOR COTTON 



growing costs in various sections of Texas. Out on the 

 High Plains, the low-cost area, they calculate that on 

 a thoroughly mechanized farm, including machine pick- 

 ing, with two-row, tractor-drawn equipment, cotton 

 lint can be made at a cost of four cents a pound; with 

 four-row equipment, three and eight- tenths cents. 



With cotton today priced at twenty-two cents, those 

 are pretty shocking figures: shocking in one way to 

 the housewife, who, shopping for hubby's handker- 

 chiefs, finds it almost impossible to buy for fifty cents 

 a poorer grade than she formerly bought for a quarter; 

 shocking in quite a different way to the cotton grower 

 in other sections where costs are twice, even three 

 times, as high. Yet in Texas nobody seriously questions 

 these figures, and I met a number of growers who ad- 

 mitted, "I'd hate to do it, but if I had to, I guess I 

 could sell cotton for six cents." 



It is easy to see why Texas planters think that Dave 

 Killough is crazy like a fox and why they are so eagerly 

 waiting the outcome of his experiments with his six 

 selected strains of semilint cotton. There is really more 

 to his idea than less cotton and more cottonseed from 

 the same acreage. A semilint cotton would by-pass the 

 entire ginning operation and go straight to the crushing 

 plant. Here its leaves and burrs would be removed in 

 cyclone separators. The scanty fiber could be recovered 

 in the regular delinting machines. The operations of 

 dehulling, cooking, and pressing out the oil might be 



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