PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOLL WEEVIL CONVENTION. 51 



up the "Oil Mills' Interest," by Mr. T. P. Sullivan, of Alexandria, La. 

 We take great pleasure in producing Mr. T. P. Sullivan, who is thoroughly 

 familiar with the oil business. 

 Mr. Sullivan read the following paper: 



MR. SULLIVAN'S PAPER. 



"I have been requested to deliver an address before this Convention 

 on "Oil Mills' Interest." My remarks on this will be necessarily brief, as 

 the time of this Convention has been profitably employed discussing the 

 means of repelling. the boll weevil, by scientists who have devoted a great 

 deal of thought and time to this seeming sectional, national, and unless 

 suppressed, I might say, universal calamity. 



"The ravages of this insect, as you are told by State and National 

 entomologists, are the most destructive that have ever attacked the prinr 

 cipal agricultural interests of the South, viz: its great staple cotton. 

 The curtailment of this product is felt throughout the habitable globe 

 where articles of cotton mannfacture are exchanged or sold. To relieve 

 this threatened cotton famine that menaces Louisiana and the cotton grow- 

 ing States, every faculty of thought and expression of the citizens of this 

 and other States are invoked with the assurance of all the aid at the 

 power of the National Government. The cotton planters of the South 

 are no more interested in repelling and exterminating the Mexican boll 

 weevil than the cotton seed oil millers, for various reasons. We have an 

 allied interest in the production and growth of cotton, claiming rela- 

 tionship by virtue of the crowning of cotton as king with cotton seed as 

 queen, and the cotton seed oil industry as the offspring of that domestic 

 relationship. Is it not natural, therefore, when the head of the family 

 is threatened with a direful calamity, the devoted wife and offspring 

 should be the first to the rescue. Blood is thicker than water, and you 

 can always rely on the cotton seed oil miller standing shoulder to shoulder 

 with the cotton planter in repelling the encroachments of anything that 

 is a menace to the growth and cultivation of cotton. As a proof of the 

 interest manifested by the cotton seed oil mills of the South in repelling 

 the boll weevil, the President of the Interstate Cotton Seed Crushers' 

 Association, Mr. A. H. D. Perkins, of Pine Bluff, Ark., appointed dele- 

 gates from all the cotton States, of whom I was one, to attend the Con- 

 vention held at Dallas, Texas, last month, in the same interest that has 

 brought about this convention. The cotton seed oil millers stand ready 

 with their means and their intelligence to give whatever is in their power 

 to strangle and exterminate this pest of foreign growth and uninvited 

 immigration. At a meeting of the Planters of North Louisiana held at 

 Shreveport, the latter part of last September, our State Entomologist, Mr. 

 Morgan, stated that this troublesome and death-dealing insect of the 



