COTTON 231 



a classification for every sort of American cotton, 

 the buyer endeavors to get the product as cheaply 

 as possible, and the producer tries to get as much 

 for his lint as possible. Ordinarily the judgment 

 rests solely with the buyer. He classes fiber as he 

 thinks it should be classed, or as he chooses to class 

 it, and offers a market price for that grade of cotton. 

 You can readily see that where only a single buyer 

 is present, and especially if that one be unscrupu- 

 lous to some degree, considerable loss may come 

 to the producer and a corresponding gain to the 

 buyer. Naturally there are tricks in buying cotton 

 as there are tricks in other trades, and honesty and 

 business integrity find recognition in the cotton 

 market as they do elsewhere in life. 



The most satisfactory selling is done where sev- 

 eral buyers are on hand, and this competition as a 

 rule means that the highest prices will be offered. 

 Of course even in this case buyers may join hands 

 and one do most of the buying one day, another a 

 second day, and so on, each taking his turn and 

 getting his cotton at the lowest price. But the 

 daily paper now gives the farmer the prices in the 

 leading markets of the world, and with the railways 

 making transportation to better markets easy, he 

 usually secures what his product is worth, or at 

 least the market value of the grade in which it is 

 classed. 



The variety of cotton has nothing to do with the 

 market classification. One variety may be classed 

 " good middling," for instance, another variety" low 

 middling," in the market scale, because of its in- 

 dividual superiority or inferiority as the case may 

 be. 



This classification is fixed by market conditions 

 as follows: 



