112 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



for export owing to the blockade. 8 R. G. Engberg in his 

 study found the size of the American crop to have a high 

 negative correlation with world cotton prices. "If we 

 take percentage by which the New York spot price in 

 December changes from that of the preceding year for 

 each year from 1881 to 1913 and correlate these figures 

 with the amount of cotton ginned in corresponding years, 

 a correlation of .778 is obtained." 9 He concluded that 

 this shows the volume of American production is the 

 major price factor. 10 



The impression should not be given, however, that this 

 potential monopoly has been of any advantage to the 

 producers. Such fluctuations in price as have occurred 

 have been due mainly to natural causes affecting pro- 

 duction. Cotton growing is a most disorganized indus- 

 try, and cotton growers are extremely individualistic. 

 There are no economic and social policies developed to 

 strengthen the grower's position. Many southern writers 

 and orators have noted this fundamental contrast between 

 the potential and the actual situation of the cotton 

 grower. The following quotation from an address of W. 

 B. Thompson, President of the Southern Cotton Asso- 

 ciation at its convention in Dallas, Texas, in 1908, is a 

 type of statement that has been uttered so often in the 

 South that it has no meaning: 



The cotton growers of the South are the greatest wealth 

 producers in the world. The cotton growing industry is po- 

 tential to make the South the richest country in the world. 

 In years gone by, because of helplessness awhile, and be- 

 cause of the habit of submission, the South has realized the 



8 Cotton Atlas, Fig. 68, p. 20. 



9 Industrial Prosperity and the Farmer, p. 152. 10 Loc. cit. 



