BULLETIN OF THE 



No. 60 



Contribution from the Bureau of Plant Industry, Wm. A. Taylor, Chief 

 • February 16, 1914. 



THE RELATION OF COTTON BUYING TO 

 COTTON GROWING. 



By 0. F. Cook, 

 Bionomist in Charge of Crop Acclimatization and Adaptation Investigations. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The need of closer contacts between the manufacturer who uses 

 cotton and the farmer who produces the raw materials has been recog- 

 nized in a recent circular on "Factors Affecting the Production of 

 Long-Staple Cotton."^ It is desirable to go somewhat more fully 

 into this relation, in the hope of making clear to the manufacturer, 

 as well as to the farmer, the fact that the present methods of buying 

 cotton do not contribute to the improvement of the cotton crop, but 

 tend rather to discourage the planting of better varieties and to the 

 neglect of the precautions that are necessary to produce superior 

 fiber. The farmer who produces better cotton than his neighbors 

 needs to understand why it is often difficult to secure a better price.^ 

 And at the same time the manufacturer should understand the need 

 of greater discrimination in prices, as the best means of encouraging 

 the production of superior fiber. The greatest improvements in pro- 

 duction are to be expected in communities organized to grow com- 

 mercial quantities of the same variety of cotton. The mutual in- 

 terest of the farmers and the manufacturers lies in this direction of 

 organized production. 



Manufacturers who use long-staple cotton, both in the United 

 •States and abroad, have complained of deterioration in quality and 

 diminished supplies of the raw materials, and have believed that 

 their branch of the cotton industry was threatened by agricultural 

 dangers ove^ which they had no control. In reality, there is no 

 agricultural reason why long-staple cottons should not be produced 

 in the United States in much larger quantities than at present and 



1 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Circular 123, p. 3-9, 1913. 



2 Similar conditions exist with, reference to the better grades of short-staple cotton. A discussion of the 

 methods and practices prevailing in the western end of the cotton belt is presented by W. A. Sherman, 

 Fred Taylor, and 0. J. Brand, of the Office of Markets, in their Studies of primary cotton market condi- 

 tions in Oklahoma. (U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 36, 36 p., 1913.) 



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