26 
COTTON 
THE LIMITS OF PROFITABLE COTTON PRODUCTION 
IN THE SOUTH 
Stretch a line from Norfolk to Memphis, Lit- 
tle Rock and Dallas, and you have the Cotton Belt 
fairly outlined — though cotton has been grown to 
some extent north of this line. It was first culti- 
vated in Virginia. One hundred and twenty years 
ago it was found on farms in parts of Delaware. 
"At the time of the Revolution the home-grown cot- 
ton was sufficiently abundant in Pennsylvania to 
supply the domestic needs of the State.'* Three 
Maryland counties grew the crop largely up to 
eighty years ago. In Civil War times Nevada and 
Illinois also figured in cotton production. 
Of late years, however, the production of cotton 
in all States beyond the borders of the old Southern 
Confederacy has steadily diminished. Kentucky, 
Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia each showed a 
declining yield for the last census decade as com- 
pared with the preceding decade. 
For fifty years now the median point of pro- 
duction has been within a radius of about 75 miles 
from Jackson, Mississippi, — in the earlier period 
northeast of Jackson, but in the last twenty years 
carried northwest by the increase of the Texas 
crop and the opening up of new lands in Oklahoma 
and Indian Territory. The cotton section west of 
the Mississippi grew 34 per cent, of the crop in 
1879, 38 per cent, in 1889, and 43 per cent, in 1899. 
The next census will probably show the center of 
production as having for the first time crossed be- 
yond the Father of Waters. 
