16 
people, simply have been inclined to take the courses that seemed 
to promise the easiest returns, without realizing that these courses 
were so seriously at variance with the interests of both the producer 
and the manufacturer. But now this divergence of interests has 
become apparent, and there is no good reason why it should continue. 
Buyers who wish to do so can learn how to serve their clients better 
than under the present system. The skillful buyers would do a 
larger proportion of business as production became more concen- 
trated by community organization. The unskillful buyers, who 
have been buying the cotton raised by unskillful farmers, would go 
out of business. 
As already stated, it is not a question of paying more for the 
cotton, but of paying more to the farmers who produce good cotton 
and less to those who produce poor cotton. This simple expedient 
would do more than any amount of exhortation to increase the 
proportion of farmers who would take the care that is necessary to 
produce good cotton. Buyers who really have the powers of dis- 
crimination that are needed in their business would have no serious 
difficulty in learning how to determine the value of the crop in the 
field much more reliably than they can determine it by drawing 
samples from the bales. The risks they now take in trusting to bale 
samples alone could be avoided almost entirely by learning how to 
judge the cotton in the field. In order to have a beneficial effect on 
production, discrimination must be based on real differences in the 
cotton. Arbitrary discrimination is naturally resented by the farmer 
as a dishonest effort at buying his cotton for less than its actual 
market value. When different prices are paid for bales that were 
raised in the same field, gathered by the same pickers, and ginned at 
the same gin, the farmer is compelled either to doubt the honesty of 
the buyers or to question their ability to distinguish the quality of 
cotton in the bale. Differences of 3 or 4 cents a pound in the valua- 
tion of the same lots of cotton are common in long-staple markets. 
UNIFORMITY BEST DETERMINED BY FIELD INSPECTION. 
Uniformity in the length and strength of the fiber is one of the 
most important factors in determining the value of long-staple 
cotton to the spinner. One of the most serious defects of the present 
system of buying on the basis of samples drawn from the bales is 
that it is not adequate for the determination of uniformity. Buyers 
commonly fail to detect an admixture of 5 or 10 per cent of short 
cotton, and even 15 or 20 per cent often "gets by." The buyers, of 
course, are not inclined to admit this, but the fact is well known to 
manufacturers. Differences in the amount of "waste" become 
apparent, of course, when the manufacturing processes are reached, 
though they are not to be detected with accuracy by the methods of 
