COTTON 69 



crop, and so rapidly are we finding new uses for 

 them all of which will be considered at greater 

 length in other chapters in this book that Mr. 

 Edward Atkinson was probably not far wrong 

 when he declared that it would be worth while for 

 the South to grow great crops of cotton, even if the 

 plant made no lint at all but seed only. How 

 varied are the uses of cottonseed meal, oil, hulls 

 and linters has been suggested in the Introduction 

 to this volume. 



The great trouble is that in the new awakening 

 to the enormous value of cottonseed as a fertilizer, 

 we have not yet come to a proper appreciation of 

 their value as a feed also; for, in fact, we may 

 feed them and still get three-fourths of their fertil- 

 izing value in the manure from the animals. How 

 unusually nutritious they are as a food may be 

 guessed from the fact that for feeding purposes 

 100 pounds of cottonseed equals in value 116 

 pounds corn, and 100 pounds cottonseed meal 

 equals 175 pounds corn. Cottonseed at 25 cents 

 a bushel or cottonseed meal at $25 a ton is as 

 cheap as corn at 40 cents a bushel. 



Tne folly, therefore, of burying this most val- 

 uable of cattle feeds burying it unused to rot in 

 the soil must be apparent to all. What should 

 we think of using wheat bran or corn meal as a 

 fertilizer for cotton without first having our live 

 stock extract its feeding value? Yet in the one 

 State in which the authors live, about $3,000,000 

 worth of cottonseed meal is used as a fertilizer 

 which means that $2,500,000 in feeding values 

 goes to nothing, and is a dead loss to our agricul- 

 tural interests. 



