176 COTTON 



The long cotton has a staple of i in., is white in colour, 

 and silky. It is known under the name of Bhamo cotton, 

 and used to be exported to China. The Chinese insisted 

 upon the different pickings being kept apart, but when 

 about fifteen years ago mechanical ginning factories were 

 started in Burma their managers were not so particular 

 as to quality and insisted upon quantity, with the result 

 that the mixing has continued, and even now no satis- 

 factory difference is made in price for the different 

 qualities or for clean-picked cotton. Three large 

 European firms have formed a combine, and, in the 

 absence of effective competition, the low prices paid by 

 the combine to cultivators must result in a reduction in 

 the acreage next year. One advantage has resulted from 

 this combine, and that is that its buyers steadily refuse 

 to accept any seed-cotton that has been watered. 



Considerable quantities of a coarse cotton giving 50 per 

 cent, ginning out-turn are grown on the sides of the hills 

 in the Shan States and other hill districts, under perennial 

 cultivation. The method of cultivation is to burn down 

 the hillside and then put in cotton plants and allow them 

 to stay for three years. By that time the soil has become 

 impoverished, and the tribes then go to other tracts and 

 start the same process afresh. Owing to lack of staff 

 and railways the Agricultural Department has not been 

 able to introduce more economic methods in these parts. 



Assam. 



There is a small plantation in the Kamrup plain of 

 Assam, where last year several acres of Buri cotton had 

 been grown as an experiment. The results have been 

 excellent. The spinner who obtained this cotton bought 

 it at the rate of 7d. per Ib. The result of this experiment 

 has astonished the officials of the Assam Agricultural 

 Department, who had previously declared that cotton 

 could not be cultivated in the plains of Assam. The 

 Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Archdale Earle, showed great 

 interest in this new venture, and promised that the 

 Agricultural Department should take up the question of 

 cotton growing. 



