142 HUMAN FACTORS IN COTTON CULTURE 



its price by creating cotton which existed in name only, 

 cotton futures. Failing to exterminate the Cotton Ex- 

 change, Watson told the growers they had yet one weapon 

 left: 



Spot cotton is king and always will be king if you will be 

 true to it. The mills can't run on cotton futures. The gambling 

 contracts made on Wall Street itself can't always be settled 

 by other contracts. Sooner or later they have got to have 

 spot cotton. 



What is Wall Street doing? It is simply betting that you 

 will sell your cotton in April, May or June at six cents and 

 a fraction. For them to win the game. you have got to do it, 

 for if you don't they lose the game and you win it. Put your~ 

 self with spot cotton just where Sully stood a year ago. Let 

 us keep in our hands that which they are bound to have. Let 

 us hold it like grim death and when they want it let them 

 come to us and pay our price. 56 



The South has become used to political gestures in 

 connection with cotton. When a sudden fall in the price of 

 cotton has thrown the section into depression the appeal 

 has been to oratory. Large numbers of legislative pallia- 

 tives and nostrums are offered during each recurring 

 depression. They serve as topics of conversation for a 

 while; they bring their sponsors into brief prominence; 

 but no one expects them to pass. "We've always been 

 hollerin' for help from the Gov'ment," one farmer told 

 Ray Stannard Baker, "but I've yet to find any man who 

 can show me where we ever got it." 



The agricultural surplus furnishes the most vexing 

 problem in farm economic policy with which the nation 

 has had to deal. The failure of laissez faire to minister 



Loc. cit. 



