44 COTTON 



negro slaves and negro tenants that we do not yet 

 appreciate the marvelous possibilities of scientific 

 cotton farming. Just take the bald statement of 

 Dr. H. J. Webber: "The average yield of cotton 

 in the United States is only about 190 pounds of 

 lint per acre, while on many large tracts carefully 

 cultivated a yield of 500 to 800 pounds per acre 

 is frequently obtained." Here in itself is material 

 for a book of sermons. 



SEED SELECTION MAY INCREASE YIELD 30 TO 50 

 PER CENT. 



For one thing, the seed for the cotton crop are 

 probably selected with less care than are seed for 

 any other farm crop that men grow. Your cotton 

 farmer will carefully select the largest and best- 

 formed ears for his seed corn; he will pay high 

 prices for improved seed or oats; even his water- 

 melon seed are selected from the most luscious and 

 reddest-meated specimens of last summer. But 

 when it comes to seed for his cotton crop he is 

 strangely careless. The average farmer gets his 

 seed haphazard from the general supply at the gin 

 good, bad, indifferent; early, late, medium; tall, 

 bushy, and ordinary, varieties all mixed. 



With such conditions there is indeed abundant 

 reason for believing that the average cotton yield per 

 acre could be increased one-fourth by only five 

 years' wise selection of seed. We know a farmer 

 now who by selecting seed from the most thrifty 

 stalks and having the seed ginned separately, in 

 two years so improved tl^e crop from the selected 

 seed that the improvement was easily noted and 

 became a matter of comment by persons passing on 



