14 BULLETIN 533, U. S. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 



dividuals. Failure to maintain the purity of stocks is the basis of 

 the popular belief that varieties of cotton soon run out. No variety 

 should be expected to remain uniform unless selection is continued 

 and admixture Avith other varieties prevented. 



In addition to this primary consideration of maintaining the 

 purity and uniformity of varieties, organized communities can deal 

 to better advantage with most of the problems of production and 

 marketing of the crop. Cultural methods are likely- to be much 

 better understood and more skillfully applied in a community where 

 only one kind of cotton is grown and differences between varieties 

 are not being confused with effects of cultural methods, soils, or sea- 

 sonal conditions. - 



Marketing problems are also greatly simplified in communities 

 that can offer commercial quantities of one superior variety of cot- 

 ton. The classing of the cotton is a function of the community 

 organization, whether done by local talent or by an expert employed 

 by the community. Classing is necessary not only for selling the 

 cotton at its true value, but for using the bales as security for loans, 

 in case the farmer lacks ready money to meet the cost of picking or 

 wishes to hold his cotton for better prices. Communities that have 

 a regular system of classing and warehousing their cotton are able 

 to arrange for loans on better terms than the individual farmer. 



Community action is also very important in relation to insect pests 

 or plant diseases. Measures of protection that can be expected to do 

 very little good if applied only by scattering individual farmers may 

 be rendered very effective if used by the entire community. This is 

 notably true of the precautions that are advised against the boll 

 weevil, but is likely to be equally so with any other parasite or dis- 

 ease that may appear in any district. If only a few of the parasitic 

 insects or diseased plants are destroyed, the farmer who takes the 

 precautions may fare no better than his more careless neighbors, but 

 if it were possible to get action by the entire community the effect of 

 any remedial measure would be definitely shown. 



CONCLUSIONS. 



Cotton was grown in California half a century ago, but the early 

 attempts were made on a basis of direct competition with the South, 

 which could not be maintained when normal conditions had been 

 reestablished after the Civil War. The present possibilities of de- 

 velopment of cotton culture in California lie in the direction of pro- 

 ducing Egyptian or other special types of long-staple cotton. The 

 demand for cotton of the Egyptian type is increasing rapidly and 

 not likely to be met by increased production in Egypt, where the 

 crop is endangered by the invasion of a new insect pest. 



