82 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



A uniform downward trend over a period of time is not 

 likely to be due to either the weather or the weevil, but 

 more often is due to the exploiting of low-yielding areas. 

 Such sections are brought into cultivation as higher prices 

 make it profitable. Although the margin of profit may 

 be lower, the cultivation of low-yielding land cannot be 

 regarded as an unforeseen hazard of production. The up- 

 ward tendency in yields can be explained, apart from 

 hazards, by the increasing use of fertilizer in the Eastern 

 Belt. The use of fertilizer adds to the cost of production 

 but increases the margin of profit by increasing the 

 yield. 



An average of the ten-year trends in yield per acre by 

 states from 1866 to 1915 illustrates some of these gen- 

 eral tendencies. 3 The average yield per acre is lowest in 

 Alabama, due possibly to the inefficiency of Black Belt 

 cultivation, and in Florida, whose sandy soils are poorly 

 suited to cotton culture. During the last three decades 

 the increasing yield per acre in the eastern states can be 

 attributed to the growth in popularity of fertilizers. The 

 highest yields are in Missouri and North Carolina, both 

 until recently, out of the main path of the boll weevil. Up 

 until 1921 the averages of yield in the Western Belt and 

 Alluvial Valley declined because of the weevil. In Texas 

 and Oklahoma an added factor was the extension of culti- 

 vation into regions of low rainfall. 



Frank H. Vanderlip, writing in 1916, gave four-tenths 

 of a bale an acre as our average production of cotton 

 and compared it with 546 pounds of lint per acre grown 

 under experimental conditions. He cited this low yield as 

 "one of the most gigantic examples of incompetency to be 



3 Cotton Atlas, Fig. 45, p. 14. 



