30 BULLETTlSr 1111, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



that allows communities to maintain and utilize superior varieties 

 of cotton has a very close analogy with provisions for carrying 

 through other public improvements, such as roads, drainage, or 

 irrigation works, instead of allowing such progress to be hampered 

 or prevented by careless, backward, or perverse individuals, who may 

 be found in small numbers in any community. 



INTEREST IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. 



Progress in cotton communities is not to be expected from external 

 influences or from organization alone, but it depends on local interest 

 inspired by practical understanding and a right public spirit or com- 

 munity point of view. Merely to recognize the advantages of the 

 one-variety plan is not enough. The successful working out of any 

 local application of the plan depends upon the constructive interest 

 and initiative of the community itself, in the same way that the 

 individual farmer must have an active and progressive interest in 

 adopting a cultural improvement, which otherwise he will fail to 

 understand br to use properly. Experience with community work in 

 other places can be utilized, but communities differ no less than 

 climates or soils, and measures of progress have to be adapted to 

 local community needs and developed mainly through local interest 

 and initiative. 



That community conditions are so varied and that some communi- 

 ties are so much more ready than others to take up and carry forward 

 such a plan as one- variety organization of cotton production make 

 it the more important to have the plan widely known among agricul- 

 tural leaders of thei cotton-growing regions, whether official or 

 private, so that the most favorable conditions for community de- 

 velopment may be found. From this standpoint the improvement of 

 the cotton industry is no longer a merely biological or breeding 

 problem, limited to the technical plant characters, cultural methods, 

 or industrial requirements, but also has a general social or sociologi- 

 cal side. Methods of organizing cotton-growing communities need 

 to be devised, studied, and gradually perfected, like methods of 

 organizing industrial corporations, irrigation districts, or other 

 special forms of cooperation. 



That pure-seed problems should be considered by sociologists would 

 not be expected, or that plant breeders should study community or- 

 ganization, but there is a common ground of interest and practical 

 cooperation. Breeders of varieties must learn the value and need of 

 community cooperation, while sociologists and economists, as well 

 as teachers and agricultural leaders generally, should take more 

 account of the biological factors that determine the improvement or 

 degeneration of varieties. To devise effective methods of organiz- 



prubleiu, limited to the technical plant characters, cultural methods, 



