COTTON 
63 
and with too much truth — that the average farmer 
takes no more care of his baled cotton than if it were 
a grindstone. "But," said Mr. J. T. Dargan, of 
Atlanta, at the New Orleans Cotton Convention, 
"the farmer is not so big a fool as you think in leav- 
ing his cotton out in the open on the farm. It is not 
only safe there under his eye, but, if it rains too 
much, he can put it under a cheap frame shed in- 
stead of taking it to town to pay storage charges 
to the warehouseman, unless he can get more bene- 
fits than now exist with the average cotton ware- 
house. What is more important to the cotton 
grower is, he has long since known that a bale of 
cotton will lose some ten or fifteen pounds by drying 
out if stored in a warehouse in comparison to when 
it is left in the open with a few planks under it to 
keep it out of the mud. Then, again, bright sunny 
weather as a rule prevails in the South until about 
Christmas, by which time most of the cotton grow- 
er's cotton has been sold to the spot cotton buyers 
in town. The farmer does not mean to act fraudu- 
lently by letting his cotton remain in the open to 
absorb moisture, but as some farmers do it, others 
are in self-defense compelled to follow suit, and I 
don't blame him for it at all, for he increases there- 
by the weight of his cotton and saves storage 
charges." 
This assertion of Mr. Dargan's, however, does 
not affect our contention as to the folly of leaving 
cotton out in the weather; it only shifts the folly 
from the farmer's shoulders to those of the buyer 
who does not take the dampness and damage into 
his reckoning when buying the staple. 
More and more, however, buyers are now coming 
to an appreciation of this fact; and the advantages 
