CHAPTER IV 



THE RISKS OF COTTON PRODUCTION: 

 THE WEATHER AND THE WEEVIL 



IT is a more or less common saying throughout the 

 South that cotton is dynamite. The phrase means that 

 the two million and more of southern farmers who with 

 their families owe their living to cotton depend upon a 

 commodity subject to the widest variations from year 

 to year. From his first apprenticeship the cotton farmer 

 learns to expect the unexpected. This lesson, however, 

 has not taught him how to provide against it. In fact 

 it is doubtful if cotton farmers can provide against their 

 two greatest risks: the hazard of crop failures, and the 

 hazard of fluctuating prices. Cotton has been and is 

 studied every day from the standpoint of the consumer. 

 Statistics are gathered and interpreted for spinners, and 

 much concern is expressed over shortages in world sup- 

 ply. Few serious studies have been made, however, of the 

 producer as he encounters the vicissitudes of failure, near- 

 failure, and bumper crops. 



The averages of the risks of production for the whole 

 Cotton Belt are set forth in the statistics of acreage 

 planted, acreage harvested, and production in standard 

 bales of five hundred pounds. From these averages the 

 Department of Agriculture has worked out the average 

 number of pounds of lint produced per acre. That the 

 risks of production are very real things even when dis- 

 tributed by the averages over the whole belt is shown by 



