ONE-VARIETY COTTON COMMUNITIES. 35 



holds its standing through a period of years must have somewhere 

 a local base, where continued interest exists and precautions of selec- 

 tion and isolation are applied to keep up the stock and maintain the 

 supplies of good seed. Local adoption and popularity of a variety, 

 to the extent of having it planted by many neighboring farmers, is 

 necessary for the development- of a select stock to the scale of com- 

 mercial production. Hence, such a nucleus or life center may be 

 looked for with any variety of note. The town of Lockhart, Tex., 

 has wide agricultural fame as the home of Triumph cotton, the most 

 prominent variety of the Texas big-boll type, bred and maintained 

 for many years by Alexander Mebane. A similar distinction is 

 enjoyed in South Carolina by Hartsville, in Darlington County, as 

 the center of production and seed supplies of the Columbia, or 

 "Webber," variety. This was bred originally from Russell's Big- 

 Boll by Dr. H. J. Webber, while connected with the United States 

 Department of Agriculture. The first distribution of seed of Co- 

 lumbia was in 1907. The importance of the work of D. E. Coker in 

 maintaining the seed stocks and establishing market relations for this 

 new type of Upland long-staple cotton has been recognized in sev- 

 eral publications of the United States Department of Agriculture. 



The original home and center of seed supply of the Trice variety 

 were around Jackson, Tenn., where the variety was bred by the late 

 Prof. S. M. Bain, of the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station. 

 The first distribution was made in 1909, after several years of careful 

 selection and isolation of the stock. That these varieties and others 

 have tended so strongly to remain localized and the seed supplies re- 

 stricted, although well adapted to cultivation over large regions, is in 

 itself an evidence of the need of giving attention more directly to the 

 utilization and seed-supply problems. 



A general plan of community cotton improvement has been fol- 

 lowed for several years by the North Carolina Department of Agri- 

 culture and has been very successful in assisting farmers to appre- 

 ciate the value of good varieties and good seed. A policy of first 

 narrowing down to a few good varieties has been followed, as lead- 

 ing gradually to an appreciation of the practical advantages and 

 advisability of using only one variety in a community. Local variety 

 tests are conducted to enable the farmers of a community to select 

 what they consider as the best from a series of promising varieties. 

 Some communities have narrowed down to two or three varieties, 

 while some keep four or five varieties in cultivation, but the number 

 is being reduced every year. 



The need of standardizing on the production of one variety is 

 realized, and in Edgecombe County, in the east-central part of North 

 Carolina, a general organization for planting a single variety has 



