18 BULLETIX 375, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGBICULTUBE. 
the interest of pure seed, improved culture, and careful picking 
should be extended to include the encouragement of custom ginning 
and a knowledge of the quality and value of cotton before marketing. 
The facts brought out by the study of the situation at Crowder are 
published because it is believed that they are typical of conditions 
in many other localities where cotton is sold in the seed and where 
efforts to improve the product of the community are being made. 
CONCLUSIONS. 
The wide variations in the lint, seed, and trash proportions of seed 
cotton, together with the impracticability of determining accurately 
these percentages and the quality of the cotton before it is ginned, 
make it impossible for the ginner justly to discriminate between the 
value of individual loads. The uncertainties thus involved cause 
buyers to base their prices on the average outturns and average grades 
of the particular community and the current lint and seed prices. 
This practice results in variations between the prices paid for the 
lint content of different loads of seed cotton. Wide differences in 
prices have been shown to exist between the lint content of loads in 
each market and between loads in the different markets investigated. 
Where lint and seed cotton are sold in the same market there is also 
an inequality between prices paid for lint cotton and for the lint con- 
tent of seed cotton. In some instances, individual farmers have 
received more for then product in the seed than they would have 
received by selling in the bale; however, in most cases, and in the 
aggregate, a loss has been shown on each grade during each month 
and throughout the entire season by selling cotton in the seed. 
Therefore this method of marketing cotton as a general practice, 
can not be condemned too strongly, and both the farmer and ginner 
are advised for the common good of all to encourage custom ginning, 
so that it may be possible to sell each bale on its merits. 
