RISKS OF THE COTTON MARKET 111 



furnishes "the 'basic price' which controls the prices of 

 all other grades of American Upland cotton and also, 

 more or less, of all other kinds of cotton." 



In April, 1924, a gloomy period for cotton manufac- 

 turers because of the short crops of the three years 

 preceding, John A. Todd, the English authority, was 

 quoted in a leading American farm journal as seeing no 

 chance of increasing supplies outside the United States 

 over a million bales a year. "One week of favorable or 

 unfavorable weather at a critical time in America means 

 more to the world's immediate cotton supply than all 

 the efforts being made to increase production elsewhere," 

 he said. 5 In The Cotton World published in 1927 he made 

 the statement, ". . . that the fluctuations of the Amer- 

 ican crop from year to year are so great that they may 

 easily counteract the total effect of any changes that 

 take place in all the other crops put together." ' 



No other group of American agricultural producers 

 have an economic position of such strategic value. The 

 United States may have a short wheat crop, for instance, 

 with very little influence on the price. An example will 

 serve. With a United States crop of 374 million bushels 

 in 1893, wheat sold for 30 cents a bushel less than in. 

 1891, with a United States crop of 600 million. To what 

 extent a short American cotton crop may influence world 

 prices was shown in the effects of the localized American 

 Civil War. In 1863 the lowest spot price of middling 

 was quoted at 70 cents and the highest at $1.60. 7 The 

 export price is given at 55 cents, but there was no cotton 



* Todd, The World's Cotton Crops, p. 1. 



B E. H. Taylor, "Cotton Is Sitting Pretty," Country Gentleman, 

 April 19, 1924, p. 9. 



P. 6. 7 "The Cotton Situation," Fig. 43, p. 389. 



