102 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



the weevil to his death. The application can be made 

 with effect only when the plants are damp and the at- 

 mosphere is still, preferably at night. 



Mr. Coad was sure he had found the answer to the 

 cotton disaster, but the solution awaited a machine for 

 distributing the dust. The machine method of covering 

 large acreage was the more needed because many plant- 

 ers were convinced that to turn dusting by hand over 

 to unskilled Negro tenants might mean ruin. Hand guns 

 were worked out but proved slow, difficult to operate, 

 and liable to breakage. They sold from $12 to $20 each, 

 and usually lasted only one season. The first machines 

 were failures. Many of them were made, it is said, by 

 men who never saw a cotton field. Those with gasoline 

 motors were unsatisfactory "because operation at night 

 necessitated more expert labor than was available." 47 

 One- and two-mule machines which apply the power for 

 the spraying device through the axle work well. The 

 one-mule machine, operated as one would a walking cul- 

 tivator, cost from $75 to $125, and was able to cover 

 from 15 to 20 acres of cotton a night. 48 



In 1918 Coad issued his first pamphlet on the method. 

 It aroused almost universal interest throughout the South. 

 Calcium arsenate was difficult to make, and only one 

 manufacturer was engaged in producing it on a com- 

 mercial scale. The next year three million pounds were 

 produced and 75,000 acres treated. The first dust con- 

 tained so much water soluble arsenate as to burn the 

 plants. When this danger was avoided the chemical some- 

 times failed to contain enough to injure the weevil. At 

 Tallulah samples from farmers were analyzed. The Fed- 



47 Hubbard, Cotton and the Cotton Market, p. 45. 



48 The Boll Weevil Problem, p. 16. 



