RISKS OF THE COTTON MARKET 147 



enriched by producing any commodity to sell abroad at 

 prices that will keep the producers poor, and that it is 

 better to lose a market monopoly than to hold it at the 

 cost of starvation wages and low living standards." ' 



It is doubtful if such a use of the police power of the 

 state would have been held constitutional. Compulsory 

 diversification, if enacted, might have started a new era 

 in southern agriculture. Failing that, the convention 

 turned to the customary plea for reduction of cotton 

 planting. 60 



Writing of the convention's failure to reach agreement, 

 G. L. Fossick said of voluntary reduction of cotton 

 planting : 



The idea is nothing new. The cotton South has often met 

 fact with expedient and each time demonstrated that hope 

 triumphs over experience. . . . Intermittently, for almost a 

 century the cotton farmer has again been guilty of over- 

 production, and each time he ... has been offered the same 

 nostrums. 61 



J. S. Wannamaker, president of the American Cotton 

 Association, has suggested a plan for stabilizing the 

 price of raw cotton which calls for neither national con- 

 trol nor voluntary cooperation of individual growers. 62 

 His plan calls for the appointment of a permanent cotton 

 commission, composed of representatives from all the 

 cotton states to study, advise, and prepare uniform legis- 



69 "Cotton a National Crop," Review of Reviews, July, 1926, p. 67. 



60 George Fort Milton, "Can Cotton Be Controlled by Law?" 

 Independent, CXVII (1926), 531-32. 



61 "Ailing King Cotton," Independent, CXVII (1926), 380-S2. 



02 "Stabilization of Cotton Prices," Manufacturers' Record, March 

 11, 1926, p. 86. 



