COTTON 
231 
a classification for every sort of American cotton, 
the buyer endeavors to get the product as cheaply 
as possible, and the producer tries to get as much 
for his lint as possible. Ordinarily the judgment 
rests solely with the buyer. He classes fiber as he 
thinks it should be classed, or as he chooses to class 
it, and offers a market price for that grade of cotton. 
You can readily see that where only a single buyer 
is present, and especially if that one be unscrupu- 
lous to some degree, considerable loss may come 
to the producer and a corresponding gain to the 
buyer. Naturally there are tricks in buying cotton 
as there are tricks in other trades, and honesty and 
business integrity find recognition in the cotton 
market as they do elsewhere in life. 
The most satisfactory selling is done where sev- 
eral buyers are on hand, and this competition as a 
rule means that the highest prices will be offered. 
Of course even in this case buyers may join hands 
and one do most of the buying one day, another a 
second day, and so on, each taking his turn and 
getting his cotton at the lowest price. But the 
daily paper now gives the farmer the prices in the 
leading markets of the world, and with the railways 
making transportation to better markets easy, he 
usually secures what his product is worth, or at 
least the market value of the grade in which it is 
classed. 
The variety of cotton has nothing to do with the 
market classification. One variety may be classed 
"good middling," for instance, another variety "low 
middling," in the market scale, because of its in- 
dividual superiority or inferiority as the case may 
be. 
This classification is fixed by market conditions 
as follows: 
