TRANSPORTATION AND STORAGE FACILITIES 613 



increase in the price of cotton which has been sold. Although the 

 acreage reduction was an important factor, the prices would have 

 continued below the cost of production in the event that the bankers' 

 warehouse campaign had not been inaugurated, particularly after the 

 British cotton contraband order became effective. 



But, valuable as the direct financial saving which has resulted 

 from this campaign has been, this is dwarfed into insignificance by 

 its great educational value for the future. This campaign has taught 

 the people of Texas that cotton can be prudently and profitably 

 stored in warehouses, has taught them how to do it, and has gotten 

 them started to doing it. It has taught the cotton-growers, the 

 homesteaders, and the tenant farmers what the benefits of cotton 

 warehouse facilities are. It has taught them that when the cotton 

 market is glutted or when it is closed by a money panic, as it was in 

 1907, or by a world-wide war, as it was in 1914, they are not com- 

 pelled, if adequate and dependable warehouse facilities are provided, 

 to sell their crop for whatever price they can get from greedy and 

 merciless speculators, but can deposit it where it will be safely and 

 economically kept, and receive in return for their deposit a warehouse 

 receipt upon which they can borrow sufficient money to meet the 

 urgent needs which otherwise they would be compelled to sacrifice 

 their year's product to liquidate. The most difficult phase of the 

 movement to provide cotton warehouses hi Texas has been that of 

 inducing farmers themselves to understand the operation of a ware- 

 housing system and to appreciate its value. It has been found 

 extremely difficult to explain to a large element of the people how it 

 was at all practicable or possible for them to pursue any other course 

 in the fall of the year, than the time-honored course they have always 

 pursued, of hauling their cotton to market, taking whatever price 

 they are offered for it, and using the proceeds as far as they would 

 go in meeting their inevitable obligations. It was difficult to con- 

 vince them that a warehousing system would save them money, because 

 they had never seen it worked, but it is not difficult now to convince 

 any one of the thousands of cotton farmers in Texas, who, in Sep- 

 tember, 1915, instead of selling his cotton at 8 cents a pound, the 

 price he was then offered, placed it in a cotton warehouse, and bor- 

 rowed money on his warehouse receipts to pay his pressing debts, and 

 later sold this self -same cotton at 12 cents a pound. 



