382 



SOUTHERN FIELD CROPS 



be regarded as more reliable. Students will find it interesting to 

 make three-year averages of the crops of still later years in order 

 to note the tendency for cotton culture to increase in certain 

 states and to decrease in others. 



Other states together produce about 1 per cent of the crop. 

 In most of the states named above, cotton is the most valuable 

 sale crop produced. The important cotton-growing states 

 embrace less than one fourth of the area of the United States. 

 Yet this small part of the country furnishes the most valuable 

 article of export from the farms of the nation. . 



Within the past few years the extension of cotton culture in 

 Oklahoma has proceeded more rapidly than in any other state, 

 thus raising this state to a higher position than it occupies in the 

 above table. 



Reports of cotton ginned each year. Both the Census Bureau 

 of the United States and the Bureau of Statistics of the National 

 Department of Agriculture devote much attention to the gather- 

 ing of statistics relative to the production of cotton. Cotton crops 

 grown in 1909, 1908, and 1907, expressed in running bales and 

 in equivalent 500-pound bales, are given in the following table 

 (Crop Reporter, Apr., 1910). 



1 Counting round as half bales and including linters. 



