PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOLL WEEVIL CONVENTION. 2Q 



which met and considered the question of the fight in which you are now 

 engaged, that is the suppression of the boll weevil in the Southern States. 

 In that meeting were the Congressmen from the States of Alabama, 

 Mississppi, Arkansas, Texas, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Ten- 

 nessee and Louisiana ? I appointed a Committee in accordance with a 

 resolution passed at that time, composed of three members from each of 

 these States, who called upon the President of the United States, and who 

 earnestly solicited his co-operation in the fight that we are now engaged 

 in. After the meeting at the White House, with this Committee, headed 

 by the distinguished and venerable member from Alabama, (Mr. Bank- 

 head) the President stated that he would endorse, in his message, any 

 recommendation made by the Secretary of Agriculture. The Secretary 

 of Agriculture, who had already pledged his assistance, sat down, at that 

 moment, and in presence of the Committee, wrote out what the President 

 of the United States should incorporate, on the subject, in his message to 

 Congress. 



I would like to call your attention, gentlemen, to one or two of the 

 statements which were presented by the Louisiana delegation to Congress 

 a few days ago, printed in the Congressional Record on the ninth day of 

 this month ; which proclaim to the people of the United States, as far as 

 possible, the great importance of the cotton industry to this country. If I 

 had the time to read it, I could show you how great and important it is 

 to all of us. Whatever our vocation, whether it be that of banker, or that 

 of a man who goes in the fields ; whether it be that of cotton-press men, 

 gin men or oil men ; no matter what our vocation may be ; this industry 

 is of the vastest and greatest importance to every one of us. The manu- 

 facturing interests of the country depend to an extent upon it, just as 

 much as the common negro who makes a living for himself and his family 

 by picking cotton. I say to you, that there has never been presented to 

 this country, a question ^vhich involves more to the people of this nation, 

 than this very one which you are considering here to-day, than the de- 

 struction of the boll weevil that now threatens to overtake the Southern 

 States of this Union. 



It is a question, my friends, which may be viewed from different stand- 

 points. I could not begin to enumerate here all the great and important 

 questions which enter into this fight. 



But I must say that I have been in other fights of Louisiana, where the 

 odds have been greater than they are in this fight. I have 'stood for the 

 sugar industry, when I was almost cast aside by my own party. I stood 

 for the rice industry, when I saw it in its swaddling clothes, and have 

 stood by it until it has risen to where it is to-day, where the production 

 almost reaches the consumption, where the question of exportation is a 

 matter of securing foreign markets. I have stood for our friends in the 

 sugar industry, and stand for that industry to-day, when it is confronted 



