PRIMARY COTTON" MARKET CONDITIONS IN OKLAHOMA. 31 



it is easily possible to rob the grower of from 5 to 20 pounds of lint 

 cotton in this way. Another trick is to manipulate the gin so as to 

 let the seed pass through without thorough ginning, thus decreasing 

 the weight of the custom-ginned bale and discouraging the practice. 

 In other cases the pressure is applied by charging an exorbitant price 

 for custom ginning. 



It is only fair to state that some of the most important and pro- 

 gressive oil-milling interests in the State are opposed to the purchase 

 of seed cotton and claim that they do so only where competition or 

 the demand of the growers themselves make it necessary. These men 

 claim that the growers invariably get the best of the bargain by 

 bringing an excessive amount of dirt to the gins in the cotton. Occa- 

 sional instances are vouched for in which loads of cotton have con- 

 tained layers of sand evidently shoveled in directly from the field or 

 the roadside. The ginners seem to find it impracticable to run the 

 seed cotton through a cleaner except in connection with the ginning 

 of the bale, so that they have no good opportunity to convince the 

 farmer as to the amount of dirt in a bale which is unloaded into the 

 storage house. 



After a severe storm which beat out a large quantity of cotton,' 

 partially covering many locks with earth and sand, a load of seed 

 cotton weighing about one ton was brought to a gin in eastern Okla- 

 homa from which 600 pounds of dirt were removed. Instances of 

 250 pounds to the load were by no means exceptional. When cotton 

 of this kind is being bought by the pound gross it is evident that the 

 ginner must use a scale of prices which will enable him to handle it 

 with safety, and that these prices must discriminate against the best 

 loads of cotton which he buys. 



Under present conditions the general practice of selling in the 

 seed can not be too strongly condemned, although a very material 

 saving in time of men and teams might be effected by a system* of 

 cooperative pooling of cotton in storage at the gin. If in connection 

 with such a system all cotton unloaded into the seed house was passed 

 through a cleaning device and graded into about four classes accord- 

 ing to the amount of trash contained, it would seem possible to gin 

 out of these various lots a considerable number of even-running bales 

 which could be sold for or by the farmers to much better advantage 

 than the individual bales can now be sold. It would seem that this 

 particular phase of the cotton-marketing situation offers an inviting 

 field for cooperative effort. 



MARKETING "BOLLY" AND "GATHERED" COTTON. 



The climatic conditions of Oklahoma and parts of Texas are such 

 that an early frost does not have such a disastrous effect on the 

 cotton crop as in the older part of the cotton belt. Much of the 



