22 BULLETIN 1111, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
gin. Formal organization may be unnecessary if agreement can 
be made effective in other ways. 
The problems of marketing have become acute in recent years 
and have the public attention as never before, but this interest 
should not detract from the importance of improving production, 
which gives a better basis for improvement than any other feature 
of the industry. For marketing reasons alone it might be urged 
that communities should grow only one variety, because better prices 
can be secured for large quantities of one kind of fiber than for 
small quantities of different kinds, but other reasons for community 
cooperation lie strictly in the field of production. Some economists 
treat marketing as a community problem, in contrast Avith produc- 
tion as an individual problem, but this distinction is hardly to be 
maintained in the cotton industry. Certainly there are market ad- 
vantages to gain through community organization, quite apart 
from any effort to improve the crop, but the community factors of 
production are equally distinct and should not be confused in prac- 
tical thinking. Organization for the improvement of production 
may serve important purposes and yet be kept entirely distinct from 
marketing organizations. 
Community production does not mean that the individual farmers 
are any less responsible for the careful handling of their crops, but 
the underlying .conditions of production are improved. With better 
varieties grown and better methods used, better results can be secured 
from all the farm operations, as well as in the marketing of the cot- 
ton at the end of the season. 
Planting only one kind of cotton in a community is a very simple 
and practicable improvement that benefits all the farmers and all 
the business men of an organized community and injures nobody. 
As soon as pure seed is available for the entire community, produc- 
tion advances to a higher plane. The only serious obstacle that 
interferes with a rapid extension of this elementary improvement 
is that the facts are not known widely and intimately enough. The 
farmers themselves, and even the leaders of agricultural progress, 
are not sufficiently aware of the practical importance of good varie- 
ties of cotton, nor of the precautions of isolation, separate ginning, 
and continued selection that are needed to maintain the purity and 
uniformity of the stocks. Many progressive farmers would be ready 
to take these precautions if they could be assured that practical ad- 
vantages would be gained, and such assurances become possible when 
one-variety conditions are established. 
Advantages of community cooperation in the marketing and 
through bringing together larger quantities of cotton are being 
demonstrated by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Coopera- 
tive marketing communities have been organized in several States, 
