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supply. In other countries, especially East and West Africa, 
the cost of transport is almost the most important item. In 
these as in many other areas, however, the labour supply is 
the easiest factor in the problem. In the Sudan, again, the 
labour problem is one of considerable difficulty, as the labour 
supply was depleted by war, etc., and will take a long time to 
recover. 
In the United States, on the other hand, the cost of labour, 
and the sheer impossibility of obtaining sufficient labour, is 
hampering the development of the possible area in an extra- 
ordinary way, especially in certain parts of the Cotton Belt, 
such as Texas. The result is that the cost of production of the 
crop has increased so greatly in recent years that it is doubtful 
whether even the high range of prices which has become 
almost normal now is sufficient to make the crop really 
profitable, or at least sufficiently so to tempt a great increase 
of area. To take only one point, the actual cost of merely 
picking the crop from the plants is now about 2 cents per Ib., 
while the price of the crop is only about 12 cents. In the new 
irrigated tracts in Arizona and California where Egyptian 
cotton has been successfully grown, the cost of picking is still 
higher, even in proportion to the high price obtained for these 
superior cottons. It seems, therefore, that labour cost bids 
fair to become the limiting factor in the development of the 
American cotton area. 
Cotton has always been regarded as essentially a cheap- 
labour crop. This was one of the chief, arguments of the 
South against the abolition of slavery. Now labour in the 
South is no longer cheap, and it is doubtful whether the culti- 
vation of the ordinary grades of cotton can withstand the 
increased labour cost. 
There seems little hope of the immediate invention of any 
mechanical appliances, such as pickers, which would help to 
solve the problem. The only other alternative is an improve- 
ment of the type of cotton grown, so that the value of the crop 
may bear a more reasonable proportion to its labour cost. 
In this problem America seems to be approaching the 
position of many other possible areas for cotton growing 
throughout the world, where the impossibility of obtaining 
a sufficient and cheap labour supply absolutely rules cotton 
growing out. This is, for example, the case in Argentina, 
where cotton could quite well be grown if labour were 
available. 
The problem is one of great importance to those other 
tropical countries where the labour supply is abundant and 
cheap and the conditions are otherwise suitable for cotton 
growing, especially India, East and West Africa, and China. 
