SELF-HELP FOR COTTON 



not only with foreign cotton and rayon and paper, but 

 also with wood pulp and peanuts and corn, adjusts its 

 enormously diversified elements in a normal market 

 by the moving balance of price in the scales of cost and 

 use. A fixed price freezes the balance; jams the whole 

 economic mechanism; creates great, often unexpected 

 strains in distant areas. 



American cotton, held aloft at an abnormally high 

 price controlled by all the financial power of the United 

 States Government, is caught in a terrific economic and 

 technological squeeze. On the one side, cheaper foreign 

 cotton is expanding at a rate of some three million bales 

 a year; three million bales literally taken from American 

 cotton's old export market. On the other hand, the price 

 of synthetic fibers comes down every year and some 

 types of rayon are already selling actually cheaper than 

 cotton. Paper, which also competes with cotton in bags 

 and cartons and napkins and scores of newer uses, is 

 already sold well below the price of cotton. At the same 

 time, the dynamic forces of research and sales promo- 

 tion are pushing both synthetics and paper much more 

 effectively than any promotion of cotton and its uses. 

 No wonder Garrard exclaims that it is about time some- 

 thing was done for cotton. 



"Whether we like it or not," said Oscar Johnston to 

 me, "the immediate future of cotton is not economic or 

 agricultural, but political." 



He should know. As president of the Delta & Pine 

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