PRIMARY COTTON MARKET CONDITIONS IN OKLAHOMA. 31 
it is easily possible to rob the grower of from 5 to 20 pounds of lint 
cotton in this way. Another trick is to manipulate the gin so as to 
let the seed pass through without thorough ginning, thus decreasing 
the weight of the custom-ginned bale and discouraging the practice. 
In other cases the pressure is applied by charging an exorbitant price 
for custom ginning. 
It is only fair to state that some of the most important and pro- 
gressive oil-milling interests in the State are opposed to the purchase 
of seed cotton and claim that they do so only where competition or 
the demand of the growers themselves make it necessary. These men 
claim that the growers invariably get the best of the bargain by 
bringing an excessive amount of dirt to the gins in the cotton. Occa- 
sional instances are vouched for in which loads of cotton have con- 
tained layers of sand evidently shoveled in directly from the field or 
the roadside. The ginners seem to find it impracticable to run the 
seed cotton through a cleaner except in connection with the ginning 
of the bale, so that they have no good opportunity to convince the 
farmer as to the amount of dirt in a bale which is unloaded into the 
storage house. 
After a severe storm which beat out a large quantity of cotton, 
partially covering many locks with earth and sand, a load of seed 
cotton weighing about one ton was brought to a gin in eastern Okla- 
homa from which 600 pounds of dirt were removed. Instances of 
250 pounds to the load were by no means exceptional. When cotton 
of this kind is being bought by the pound gross it is evident that the 
ginner must use a scale of prices which will enable him to handle it 
with safety, and that these prices must discriminate against the best 
loads of cotton which he buys. 
Under present conditions the general practice of selling in the 
seed can not be too strongly condemned, although a very material 
saving in time of men and teams might be effected by a system* of 
cooperative pooling of cotton in storage at the gin. If in connection 
with such a system all cotton unloaded into the seed house was passed 
through a cleaning device and graded into about four classes accord- 
ing to the amount of trash contained, it would seem possible to gin 
out of these various lots a considerable number of even-running bales 
which could be sold for or by the farmers to much better advantage 
than the individual bales can now be sold. It would seem that this 
particular phase of the cotton-marketing situation offers an inviting 
field for cooperative effort. 
MARKETING "BOLLY" AND " GATHERED " COTTON. 
The climatic conditions of Oklahoma and parts of Texas are such 
that an early frost does not have such a disastrous effect on the 
cotton crop as in the older part of the cotton belt. Much of the 
