INTRODUCTION 



The history of cotton culture is interesting. The cotton plant 

 has an ancient history, having been mentioned as being grown in 

 India more than 2,500 years ago. It was there used for the manu- 

 facture of clothing, which was said by the early Greek historian, 

 Herodotus, "to be of better quality and finer fiber than that of the 

 sheep." And in his account of the plant he used the very same term, 

 as is now applied to it by the Germans, namely, "tree wool." 



The cotton plant was growing on the American continent at the 

 time of its discovery by Columbus, and cotton cloth has been found 

 in the ancient tombs of the Incas of Peru. The first efforts to grow 

 cotton in the United States were made in Virginia about the year 

 1621. In 1781 eight bags of cotton were shipped to England, and in 

 a few years the trade increased to 84,000 bales. In the year 1861 

 the exports were 1,841,000 bales, and yet, large as these figures ap- 

 peared, the exports kept growing in volume so that for the year 

 ending August 31, 1909, these amounted to 8,566,342 bales, the crop 

 in this country being 13,587,306 bales. The crop of the world for 

 the same period was over 18,000,000 bales of 500 pounds each. Of 

 the four great staples for clothing cotton, silk, wool, and flax 

 cotton has far outstripped all the others in consumption. Thus, 

 while fifty years ago only 2,500,000 bales were manufactured into 

 clothing material, the present high- water mark shows over 17,000,- 

 ooo bales thus used! And yet, as the editor, Mr. Edward Atkinson, 

 has stated, less than one-half of the people of the world are fully 

 supplied with cotton goods. 



It is reasonable to assume that the demand will continue to in- 

 crease, and although there will be a natural increase in acreage and 

 production following high prices, it behooves the individual planter 

 to safeguard his own interests by increasing the yield on each acre 

 by intensive methods of culture. 



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