18 BULLETIN 36, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



depriving the producer of the legitimate fruits of his special care 

 and labor. By this system the careful and progressive are regularly 

 penalized for the benefit of the indifferent and thriftless. 



MARKETING THE HIGHEST GRADES. 



For some reason not satisfactorily explained, the cotton trade in 

 Oklahoma recognizes no grade above good middling. All strict 

 good middling and middling fair bales are expected to be graded 

 and sold as good middling. The reason for this practice is alleged 

 to be that the higher grades are not produced in sufficient volume 

 to permit full carlots to be concentrated for shipment. Consequently 

 small dealers or farmers can not get a cem above good middling 

 price for strict good middling bales, even when their actual grade 

 is admitted by the cotton merchant. The larger dealers in turn 

 claim that strict good middling bales accumulate so slowly that it 

 does not pay to take account of them and that they are included in 

 their shipments of good middling without credit or recognition. 



Hoping to throw light upon this point, we have separated the 

 figures for all strict good middling bales sampled in our market sur- 

 vey and have made comparisons with prices paid at the same place 

 and date for good middling bales. We find that in many cases no 

 distinction is made. In other cases the lower grade brings the higher 

 price; but when the total sales of each are averaged and compared 

 for 34 strict good middlings found in 10 towns and 59 good mid- 

 dlings sampled at the same places and dates, we find an average 

 difference of 12 points in the price paid the farmer in favor of the 

 better grade, which, in view of the almost unanimous declaration of 

 the trade that the strict good middling grade is not recognized, must 

 mean that a considerable number of good middling bales are bought 

 below grade. 



Our sampling began late in October, and records of comparatively 

 few balesi sold on earlier dates were obtained. The part of the crop 

 carrying the largest percentage of high grades had already passed 

 from first hands. Our method of selection probably gave us a larger 

 percentage of high grades than existed in the body of the crop which 

 was marketed while our work was in progress, but perhaps not 

 higher than would have been found in the crop as a whole, and if 

 this is the case the crop of Oklahoma for 1912 contained some 19,000 

 bales of strict good middling cotton, on which the New York differ- 

 ences would entitle some one to a total of over $20,000 in premiums 

 above the price of good middling. No one in the State who was 

 interviewed admitted having received a cent of this premium. It 

 would seem that this item is worthy of the attention of some of the 

 larger operators in Oklahoma, and the suggestion is made that these 

 figures indicate a larger production of high-grading bales in the 



