16 BULLETIN 60, U. S. DEPAETMENT OF AGEICULTUEE. 



people, simply have been inclined to take the courses that seemed 

 to promise the easiest returns, without realizing that these courses 

 were so seriously at variance with the interests of both the producer 

 and the manufacturer. But now this divergence of interests has 

 become apparent, and there is no good reason why it should continue. 

 Buyers who wish to do so can learn how to serve their clients better 

 than under the present system. The skillful buyers would do a 

 larger proportion of business as production became more concen- 

 trated by community organization. The unskillful buyers, who 

 have been buying the cotton raised by unskillful farmers, would go 

 out of busmess. 



As already stated, it is not a question of paying more for the 

 cotton, but of paying more to the farmers who produce good cotton 

 and less to those who produce poor cotton. This simple expedient 

 would do more than any amount of exhortation to increase the 

 proportion of farmers who would take the care that is necessary to 

 produce good cotton. Buyers who really have the powers of dis- 

 crimination that are needed in their business would have no serious 

 difficulty in learning how to determine the value of the crop in the 

 field much more reliably than they can determine it by drawing 

 samples from the bales. The risks they now take in trusting to bale 

 samples alone could be. avoided almost entirely by learning how to 

 judge the cotton in the field. In order to have a beneficial effect on 

 production, discrimination must be based on real differences in the 

 cotton. Arbitrary discrimination is naturally resented by the farmer 

 as a dishonest effort at buying his cotton for less than its actual 

 market value. When different prices are paid for bales that were 

 raised in the same field, gathered by the same pickers, and ginned at 

 the same gin, the farmer is compelled. either to doubt the honesty of 

 the buyers or to question their ability to distinguish the quahty of 

 cotton in the bale. Differences of 3 or 4 cents a pound in the valua- 

 tion of the same lots of cotton are common in long-staple markets. 



UNIFORMITY BEST DETERMINED BY FIELD INSPECTION. 



Uniformity in the length and strength of the fiber is one of the 

 most important factors in determining the value of long-staple 

 cotton to the spinner. One of the most serious defects of the present 

 system of buying on the basis of samples drawn from the bales is 

 that it is not adequate for the determination of uniformity. Buyers 

 commonly fail to detect an admixture of 5 or 10 per cent of short 

 cotton, and even 15 or 20 per cent often ''gets by." The buyers, of 

 course, are not inclined to admit this, but the fact is well known to 

 manufacturers. Differences in the amount of "waste" become 

 apparent, of course, when the manufacturing processes are reached, 

 though they are not to be detected with accuracy by the methods of 



