SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



Land Company, he operates some fifty thousand acres 

 in the best cotton section and he has served on both 

 the Agricultural Adjustment Agency and the Commod- 

 ity Credit Corporation. Furthermore, this short, baldish, 

 Mississippi lawyer-planter, who talks so businesslike, is 

 daddy of the National Cotton Council, a really new 

 idea in self-help for cotton. 



In the war on the political front, this recently formed 

 Cotton Council occupies a position not unlike a gov- 

 ernment in exile. It is a unique organization. Set up 

 upon a state basis, it gathers together producers, gin- 

 ners, seed crushers, warehousemen, merchants, and 

 spinners, all the elements involved in cotton. As in the 

 Congress, each group is represented proportionally; the 

 whole is financed by a prorata levy per bale grown, 

 handled, or used. The Council has four postwar pro- 

 grams: for sales promotion of cotton products in domes- 

 tic markets; for producing, processing, and marketing 

 so as to increase quality and cut costs; for the recovery 

 of exports; for research to develop new cotton products 

 and improve old ones. 



At the University of Texas a staff of the Council is 

 mapping the defenses and offenses of this war. Its Ad- 

 jutant-General is Dr. Simon Williams, a diffident young 

 man, self-effacing until he gets on the subject of cotton. 

 Then his brown eyes snap, his swarthy face lights up, 

 and he says the most amazingly frank things. Having 

 been trained in forestry at Syracuse University, he 



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