COMMUNITY PRODUCTION OF EGYPTIAN COTTON. 11 



results were obtained in certain localities, but owing to the difficulties 

 mentioned the experiments did not result in the establishment of 

 commercial production. 



BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS IN THE SOUTHWEST. 



The irrigated lands of southern Arizona and southeastern Cali- 

 fornia, where the climatic conditions more nearly resemble those of 

 Egypt than in the cotton belt, were found to offer the most promis- 

 ing field for the introduction of this type of cotton. In the early 

 stages of the work, however, serious difficulties were encountered in 

 this region also. The most important of these were the following: 

 (1) The lack of proper facilities for carrying on the plant-breeding 

 work and the investigations of cultural methods; (2) lack of uni- 

 formity in the imported stocks of seed and slow progress in the 

 development of a productive type having fiber of sufficiently good 

 quality and uniformity to warrant its recommendation for com- 

 mercial production; and (3) lack of information as to the proper 

 methods of irrigation and culture under the climatic and soil con- 

 ditions of the region. 



It also became apparent that, even if these cultural difficulties could 

 be overcome, certain economic problems would need to be solved be- 

 fore commercial production could be undertaken with any hope of 

 success. These problems were as follows: (1) The scarcity and high 

 price of labor in this thinly populated region, which threatened to 

 make the picking so expensive that no profit could be anticipated; 

 and (2) the difficulty of ginning and marketing the crop grown in 

 a small way by farmers in localities remote from established cotton 

 markets. 



The first-mentioned difficulty was overcome when the Department 

 of Agriculture established two well-equipped experiment farms 

 where the plant-breeding work and the study of cultural methods 

 could be carried on from year to year on the same soils and under 

 the same management. These farms are the Cooperative Testing 

 and Demonstration Garden at Sacaton, Ariz., with Mr. E. W. Hud- 

 son as superintendent, conducted by the Office of Crop Physiology 

 and Breeding Investigations in cooperation with the Office of Indian 

 Affairs, Department of the Interior, and the experiment farm at 

 Bard, CaL, on the Yuma Reclamation Project, formerly in charge of 

 Mr. "W. A. Peterson and at present under the superintendence of Mr. 

 R. E. Blair, conducted by the Office of Western Irrigation Agricul- 

 ture in cooperation with the United States Reclamation Service. 1 



Ulr. Argyle McLachlan served for several years as field agent of the Department of 

 Agriculture in the Southwest, and while his attention was devoted mainly to the Durango- 

 cotton industry in the Imperial Valley, he also aided effectively in the work with Egyptian 

 cotton in the Salt River Valley. 



