64 
COTTON 
of storing cotton in dry places is recognized by the 
payment of higher prices — both on account of the 
better fiber and on account of the fact that with the 
dry cotton the buyer knows he is purchasing cotton, 
while in the latter case, it is a mixture of cotton with 
an extra quantity of moisture. A Charlotte paper, 
we believe, recently estimated the season's loss to 
its farmers by reason of damaged cotton at $25,000 
— and this on a comparatively small market. 
NOT A LOW PRICE, BUT A STABLE PRICE, NEEDED BY 
THE MANUFACTURER 
The organization of cotton farmers, there- 
fore, means chiefly a better regulated acreage and a 
better regulated system of marketing; and greater 
stability in prices is the chief good to be derived 
from each of these. To have cotton prices ranging 
from five to fifteen cents in a decade, is manifestly 
demoralizing to every interest dependent upon the 
staple; a uniform price of ten cents would be 
vastly more helpful to all of them. To the cotton 
manufacturer it matters little whether the prices 
are high or low ; his profits are perhaps greater when 
cotton is fairly high. But what he does need is a 
fairly stable price so that he may take an order for 
manufactured goods months ahead with some idea 
as to what price he must ask in order to have a 
fair margin of profit. With the price of raw 
material ranging from seven to seventeen cents in 
eight months, as we have seen that it actually did 
a short time ago, it is of course impossible to make 
such an advance calculation with any degree of 
accuracy. 
