COTTON WAREHOUSE CONSTRUCTION. 37 



comparatively little business and eventually fail because the banks 

 are not willing to advance money on cotton stored with them. This 

 should certainly be taken into consideration when preparing to build 

 a warehouse. If satisfactory financial connections can not be 

 arranged, the chances are that the undertaking will prove a disap- 

 pointment and the promoters will necessarily lose by making such an 

 investment. 



COOPERATION OF FARMERS. 



Other investigations J have shown conclusively that most of the 

 small warehouses located near the points of production do not pay 

 for the operating expenses and deterioration of the property. For 

 this reason very few companies in the small towns are inclined to 

 operate warehouses that give adequate service. If the farmers in 

 such a community wish to be assured of storage service at all times, 

 they should form cooperative associations and build their own stor- 

 age houses. In most cases such associations would not be expected 

 to pay any dividends, but the farmers would be sure that they would 

 have available storage space at all times, and in this way they would 

 be independent of factors, merchants, and others who now control 

 most of the storage space. If the farmers in such communities 

 would go further and organize selling associations, it would be pos- 

 sible to employ an experienced cotton man who would be able to 

 market the cotton more profitably than is now done. The cotton 

 mills are saving considerable sums of money by cooperation in insur- 

 ance. The mutual companies insure cotton belonging to mills for 

 much less than it is necessary to pay when cotton is stored in a 

 public warehouse. There is no reason why farmers should not 

 save by cooperating in building and insuring their own cotton ware- 

 houses. 



CONCLUSION. 



An adequate system of storage houses is one of the most impera- 

 tive needs of the South. Such an improvement would bring about 

 an annual saving of millions of dollars from what is usually called 

 "country damage." This change would also eventually bring about 

 many reforms in the present method of marketing cotton. In addi- 

 tion to cotton, the South annually handles products worth hundreds 

 of millions of dollars that would be stored if it were possible to do so 

 under favorable conditions. There is also a great demand for storage 

 space for merchandise and various manufactured products, such as 

 fertilizers and farm machinery. 



In concluding this discussion of the construction of warehouses, it 

 is urged again that it is of the greatest importance that warehouses 



1 Nixon, Robert L. Cotton Warehouses: Storage Facilities now Available in the South. Bulletin 216, 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture. 1915. 



