

THE WEATHER AND THE WEEVIL 101 



ever before. Between 1913 and 1920 "ten southern states 

 increased their production of corn 18 per cent, oats 50, 

 rice 72, white potatoes 60, sweet potatoes 117, hay 150, 

 milch cows 16, and hogs 23." 48 The people of Enterprize, 

 Alabama, enriched by the war-time demand for the food- 

 stuff produced by their diversified farming erected a 

 monument with this inscription : 



"In profound appreciation of the Boll Weevil and 

 what it has done as the Herald of prosperity. This mon- 

 ument was erected by the citizens of Enterprize, Coffee 

 County, -Alabama." 



With the close of the war came a slacking of the 

 demand for foodstuffs followed by the economic depres- 

 sion and the fall in land values. In many areas the habit 

 of diversification had been established, but in other places 

 the Cotton Belt tended to return to the cultivation of 

 cotton with the boll weevil added to the risks of pro- 

 duction. 



The Government experiments got under way, and 

 specialists in fields and laboratories worked on the prob- 

 lem, first at Victoria, Texas, then Dallas and finally 

 Tallulah, Louisiana. At last from the Government Wee- 

 vil Laboratory, the Experiment Farm at Tallulah, Louisi- 

 ana, came announcement of the long-awaited weevil cure. 

 The patient researches of Professor B. R. Coad had 

 discovered that the weevil, for all his boring into the 

 depths of the boll, had a tendency to seek moisture 

 wherever it could be found on the cotton plant. He 

 arrived at the plan of dusting a rather virulent poison, 

 calcium arsenate, on the plant while it was covered with 

 dew. The dust sticks and each bath of moisture attracts 



40 Smith, North America, p. 225. 





