18 PACKING AND MABKBTING OF COTTON. 



buyers who handle cotton have no facilities for taking care of it, and the ex- 

 porter is not prepared to protect it, hence it has a perilous journey after passing 

 out of the grower's hands and before reaching the mill. 



LACK OF WAREHOUSE FACILITIES. 



The farmer is not singular in this respect. The merchant is equally 

 careless and indifferent, but his action is in the main attributable to 

 inadequate facilities to protect rather than a desire artificially to 

 increase the weight'by questionable processes. The fact that there is 

 great deficiency in facilities for proper storage and that it has long 

 been the custom to see cotton flanking the highways and massed at 

 convenient points for long periods of time, exposed to the weather 

 and offering temptation and opportunity for pilfering, has been 

 instrumental in creating a feeling of indifference and in contributing 

 to the belief that long exposure does not damage cotton. Therefore 

 merchants look with complacency upon- cotton without shelter, and 

 when questioned will reply that rain and dampness add a certain 

 degree of moisture which sunshine and wind cause to evaporate and 

 leave the cotton without appreciable damage. Lack of proper 

 storage and systematic warehousing, like insufficient and inadequate 

 covering for the bale, is a natural result of the -perpetuation of the 

 antiquated system of handling cotton. These adverse conditions are 

 primarily attributable to the absence of system and lack of organiza- 

 tion in this enormous industry. It has grown without the nurture 

 and aid that come and abide with organization. The world's neces- 

 sities have applied the propelling force, and this would undoubtedly 

 have been much greater, more efficient, and valuable with organiza- 

 tion as an auxiliary. 



Mr. Harvie Jordan, of Atlanta, Ga., a cotton planter and otherwise 

 interested in the industry, in describing the lack of warehouses and 

 the consequent loss and damage, said: 



The absence of adequate warehouses and shedding facilities at interior points 

 and at our ports is responsible in a great measure for the badly damaged con- 

 dition of lint when finally delivered to the mills for consumption. There is not 

 a single cotton-growing county in the Southern States which has ample or first- 

 class warehouse facilities for the storage of the crop until ready for sale and 

 shipment. There is not a single compress plant in the South with adequate 

 shedded platforms to protect the bales from the damaging effects of the weather 

 during the periods of congestion at such plants in the fall and winter months. 

 There is not a single cotton port in the South where cotton can be properly 

 stored and kept from the damaging influences of rain, sunshine, and wind until 

 it is loaded on the vessel. The majority of farmers who hold all or a portion 

 of their cotton crop on their farms until ready for market leave the bales lying 

 around on the ground, part of the time in the mud, without shelter and practi- 

 cally without any care whatever. In most of the interior markets the limited 

 warehouse space is soon filled, and the balance of the crop, when delivered at 

 such points, is stored on the streets or sidewalks or thrown on vacant lots, 

 there to lie in the snow, sleet, rain, and mud until sold and routed to the big 

 compresses for recompression, when it goes through the same kind of neglect, 

 and then on to the ports for a continuance of such treatment 



Figures 5, 6, and 7 illustrate the methods of storing cotton during 

 the busy season. They are reproduced through the courtesy of the 

 Cotton Publishing Co., of Atlanta, Ga. 



