12 BULLETIN 60, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
system of buying. In former decades, when the quality of the fiber 
was considered, nobody would have thought of growing such cotton 
or of breeding such varieties. In addition to their inferior lint, the 
high percentage varieties usually have smaller seeds and weaker 
seedlings, a very undesirable character from the agricultural stand- 
point. It is easier to secure higher percentages by selecting varia- 
tions toward small seeds than to increase the amount of lint on the 
seeds. 1 
Manufacturers have assumed or have been led to suppose that the 
dangers threatening the cotton industry were purely agricultural, 
such as the exhaustion of the soil, change of climate, or attacks of 
the boll weevil, and this makes it harder for them to understand 
that the primary causes of deterioration in the quality of the fiber 
have been commercial rather than agricultural. This does not mean, 
of course, that there are not many other agricultural improvements 
that need to be made, but it does mean that the manufacturer should 
take greater care to see that the farmer has the necessary induce- 
ment to plant superior varieties and to adopt the more careful meth- 
ods that are necessary to produce better fiber. 
DETERIORATION OF THE SEA ISLAND COTTON CROP. 
Until recent years some of the planters of Sea Island cotton in 
South Carolina have been able to sell their crops direct to the Euro- 
pean manufacturers. In order to be sure of having the particular 
strain of fiber that the planter raised, the manufacturer often made 
contracts for several years in advance and at prices well above the 
ordinary market quotations. The possibility of securing these 
advantageous contracts led the more intelligent planters on the Sea 
Islands to use one of the most highly specialized systems of selection 
that has ever been applied to cotton or to any other field crop grown 
from seed. In order to provide the uniformity of fiber so much 
desired by the manufacturer, the Sea Island planter raised the crop 
of each year from seed derived from a single individual plant. In 
order to do this, it was necessary to select a superior individual three 
or four years in advance and keep its progeny separate while the 
stock of seed was being increased. 
As long as the planters had the prospect of securing a fair return 
for these precautions, extra care was taken to protect the uniformity 
of the stocks. But now that the system of buying has been changed 
and the special contracts are no longer made, the policy of strict 
selection is being relaxed. A rapid deterioration of the Sea Island 
crop is said to have taken place, and this is easily understood from 
the diversity that exists in many of the fields. Some of the planters 
i Cook, O. F. Danger in judging cotton varieties by lint percentages. U. S. Department of Agriculture, 
Bureau of Plant Industry, Circular 11, 16 p., 1908. 
