THE PRESENT COTTON SYSTEM 193 



ent in the credit system. The crop lien, as said above, is 

 a form of restrictive credit which assigns to the creditor 

 the control of the sale of the product. Accordingly, cot- 

 ton produced on rented land or on credit arrangements 

 is sold through the landlord or merchant. Often in the 

 Cotton Belt ginners and supply merchants are cotton 

 buyers, having connections with the larger cotton com- 

 panies. The demands of the creditors and the fact that 

 cotton is practically the only cash crop for many farm- 

 ers, tend to throw the product on the market as soon 

 as it is ginned. An observer of southern agricultural con- 

 ditions thus sees the interaction of producers with buyers 

 in the primary markets : 



I saw the farmers coming into the markets this fall by 

 hundreds with the products over which they had sweated and 

 toiled all the year; a great unorganized procession . . . with- 

 out a common purpose and no group direction. . . . 



Once in market towns they find themselves the one un- 

 organized group in a world more or less highly organized. 

 [The cotton farmer] finds himself everywhere under pres- 

 sure and in a hostile atmosphere. . . . Each man must deal 

 separately with this powerful and intricate machine for buy- 

 ing and financing his crops. He finds that he is competing 

 in the market with his neighbor farmer, . . . thus lowering 

 the price for both. . . . Often he cannot wait; the merchant 

 and the banker are clamoring for their money, . . . the re- 

 sult . . . prices are often forced below the cost of pro- 

 duction. 28 



Cince this study was written, A. B. Cox's The Marketing of Cotton 

 and R. H. Montgomery's The Cooperative Pattern in Cotton, a 

 history of the Texas Cotton Cooperative, have been published. Both 

 are of great value to the student of cotton culture. 

 28 Ray Stannard Baker, New York Evening Post, March 10, 1921. 



