THE RELATION OF COTTON BUYING TO COTTON GROWING. 5 



CAREFUL FARMERS DESERVE THE HIGHER PRICES. 



No complete or permanent improvement is to be expected unless 

 more direct financial advantages are offered to the careful farmer. 

 The scientific and moral encouragement to raise pure, uniform, high- 

 grade cotton so as to enhance the reputation of the district may be 

 urged as a motive of local patriotism, and local agencies may con- 

 tinue to cooperate in the effort to organize the whole community 

 in the interest of long-staple production, but all these considerations 

 may fail of the desired result unless the commercial interests will 

 add a financial object to the other motives. 



As a means of illustrating this, it may be well to give extracts 

 from a report by Mr. Argyle McLachlan, of this department, cover- 

 ing the different kinds of mistakes or accidents encountered in a 

 single season in the effort to guard the Durango cotton against con- 

 tamination from the Upland short-staple and Egyptian cotton 

 previously grown in the Imperial Valley of California. In addition 

 to placing the farmers more on their guard, an account of these errors 

 may make it easier for manufacturers to understand not only that 

 special precautions are necessary, but that the regular observance 

 of such precautions amounts to a real reform of agricultural methods, 

 a reform that needs to be encouraged by a change of commercial 

 policy. 



If any single precaution were sufficient to keep the seed pure, a 

 general observance would be much more easily established, but in 

 reality many different precautions must be taken. Most farmers 

 are now so careless or so little intent upon the idea of keeping their 

 seed pure that they fall readily into one or another of the many mis- 

 takes that are fatal to the uniformity of a variety of cotton. 



Mr. McLachlan's statement is as follows: 



That intelligent management is required to preserve clean stocks of any variety of 

 cotton seed is forcibly shown by the numerous accidents which have occurred in the 

 Imperial Valley in connection with the Durango cotton. 



Clean Durango seed, purchased at fancy prices, has been planted on land where 

 short-staple cotton was grown in the previous season, thus insuring mixture of seed 

 and cross-pollination from the volunteer short-staple plants. In one case a farmer 

 who had been cautioned against planting his new pure seed on land where Egyptian 

 cotton had previously been grown, afterward planted the seed on land which had 

 been in short staple. This shows that the object of the precaution was completely 

 misunderstood, for if new land could not be had it would have been much better to 

 plant the Durango where the Egyptian cotton had been. Egyptian volunteer plants 

 could have been detected and removed much more easily than the short-staple Upland 

 volunteers. 



Several lots of Durango seed were brought in from Texas, and came from as many dif- 

 ferent planters. Some lots were known to have been carefully grown and ginned 

 separately to avoid mixing with seed of other varieties, but other lots were not known 

 to have received similar care. Special care had been urged in handling these different 

 lots in order to keep the seed that was known to be clean separate from the other lots. 

 In spite of repeated cautioning, the identity of the clean seed was made uncertain 



