14 BULLETIN 1111, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
with mutual relations, whether recognized or not. The ginning es- 
tablishment and the surrounding farmers who grow the cotton rep- 
resent two parts of a local system of production. The farmers are 
dependent upon the gin, not only for separating the lint from the 
seed, and thus completing the harvest of the crop, and for packing 
the product in bales, so that it can be sent to market, but also with 
respect to future crops, for the seed as well as the lint goes through 
the gin machinery, so that the seed supply is affected. 
Cotton gins are like grist mills in having no provision for keep- 
ing any farmer's seed separate. A modern gin equipment gives each 
farmer several bushels of the mixed seed held over in the gin rolls 
from the previous customer's seed, most of it worked out gradually 
into the seed of the next customer. In this way a general com- 
munity mixture is formed if the tendency is not overcome. 
The larger the development of ginning machinery to work more 
economically and efficiently, the wider the community seed relation 
becomes. The community, therefore, must decide whether one good 
variety is to be grown or a degenerating mixture of varieties. 
The industry as a whole is made up of gin-unit communities, each 
with its ginning establishment as the center or focal point of com- 
munity interest and activity, like the nucleus of a cell in a plant 
or animal tissue. But a biological analogy for the general struc- 
ture of the cotton industry is not complete, because the relation of 
the gins to the surrounding communities is not wholly beneficial or 
constructive. The ginning and baling are done, but as long as gins 
are responsible for the mixture and deterioration of varieties there 
is a drawback, a negative, injurious effect on production. Once 
this is clearly recognized the injury can be avoided by organizing 
one-variety communities. The public gin ceases to be a menace 
or agency of deterioration when the cotton is all of one kind. 
It is conceivable that the mixing of seed at gins could be avoided 
by devising and installing new types of gin machinery and gin- 
house equipment that would keep each farmer's seed separate. 
Such mechanical improvements would be possible and certainly 
would be desirable, even at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, 
if there were no better way to have the industry supplied with 
good seed. But there is a simpler and more effective way that can 
be followed in any progressive community by the farmers uniting 
upon the planting of a single superior variety. No extra cost is 
involved in the plan of one-variety communities, and the crossing 
of varieties in adjacent fields by bees or other insects is avoided 
as well as the mixing of seed at the gin, so that a progressive course 
is open toward a general utilization of superior varieties, in com- 
plete contrast with the present system. 
