214 BRAZILIAN COTTON 



The fields will serve as a demonstration for the rational method of 

 cultivation with ploughs, etc., rotation of crops. I am not advising 

 the Government to undertake the establishment of these farms in the 

 expectation that public funds will be required annually to subsidise 

 them ; on the contrary, the farms A\hich I propose, ought to show 

 every year a handsome profit and the manager, who is unable to show 

 after two years' working that a profit can be made, must be replaced . 

 Such farms should be established in each State — perhaps Alagoas and 

 Sergipe might require only one between them. 



Allow me to insist that these seed farms constitute the key to 

 the cotton problem of Brazil ; if you delay, or if you do not create 

 these farms you might as well give up all idea of ever achieving anything 

 in the way of improvement, for Brazilian cotton will never be able 

 to compete in the world's markets with cotton from other countries 

 and Avithin a comparatively short time your cottons will depreciate 

 so much that the cotton mills of Brazil will be obliged to import from 

 the U.S.A. a large amount of their raw material. Cotton is a plant 

 which lends itself easily to hybridization. It is exactly the same as 

 with cattle. In the raising of stock every farmer recognises the 

 importance of pure ])lood — with plants it is the same, especially with 

 cotton. The mixing of the seed in the ginning factories and the crossing 

 in the field caused by insects or by wind have reduced the quality 

 and probably the quantity of your cotton and this retrogression is 

 bound to continue unless you establish the seed farms about which 

 I have spoken at length. I may cite the case of India. Some three 

 centuries ago the natives there produced on their hand-looms such 

 delicate textures as we cannot weave to-day with the most up-to-date 

 machinery. There is evidence to show that these diaphanous cloths 

 were produced from cotton grown in India. To-day there is not to 

 be found in India a fibre of greater length than of 28 mm., and by far 

 the largest portion of the Indian crop consists of half that length. 

 The explanation of this reduction in the length and fineness of fibre 

 is due to the fact that the seeds have been mixed during these many 

 years and the pollen of one variety crossed with another, so that India 

 which at one time produced the longest fibre in the world is known 

 to-day as the supplier of the shortest fibre. During the last 20 years 

 the Government of India has engaged competent botanists to separate 

 the different types which exist and there is now noticeable an improve- 

 ment in the fibre. The case of Brazil is identical with India as was 

 proved to us in the Serido where the best cultivators told us that the 

 truest strain of " Moco " no longer existed and a Liverpool cotton 

 classer who has been in Brazil for the last eight years assured me that 

 during this period he had noticed a falling off in the Moco quahty. 

 All your cottons show signs of hybridization, and it is high time you 

 stopped this retrogression. I am not overstating the case when I 

 tell you that the mills of Brazil will be forced to import cotton from 

 elsewhere if you do not adopt such means as I have pointed out. You 

 have the means — without annual outlay of money — to produce large 

 quantities of cotton of a uniform type and thus increase your exports 

 of cotton, which will naturally tend to consolidate the financial 

 position of Brazil ; but if you show apathy, you w\\\ be drifting to 

 that state when your largest industry will be obliged to send out of 

 the country consideral)le sums of money for the purchase of its raw 



