2 BULLETIN 533, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
cotton were brought to disaster through the destruction of cotton by 
the boll weevil or by the loss of a market at the beginning of the 
European war. These crises were the more acute because cotton had 
been considered so long a safe crop and afforded new demonstrations 
of the danger of complete reliance of any community on a single 
crop. In California it is beginning to be understood that many com- 
munities are devoted too exclusively to special industries and that 
there is need of some such crop as cotton for opening the way toward 
a safer policy of more diversified farming. 
In many of the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, 
and America, efforts are being made to establish cotton culture as 
colonial enterprises on a basis of permanent competition with the 
United States. There can hardly be a question of the desirability 
of utilizing our resources of production as far as feasible. One of 
these undeveloped resources is the production of Egyptian cotton, 
which experiments have shown to be possible in Arizona and Cali- 
fornia. The need of supplementing our importations of Egyptian 
cotton by domestic production has recently been very acute, and the 
high prices that are now being paid are attracting public attention 
to the possibilities of cotton growing in California. 
INCREASING DEMANDS FOR LONG-STAPLE COTTON. 
Xo danger of direct competition with the older centers of cotton 
production in the Southeastern States is involved in the development 
of cotton culture in California, for the reason that it will be so ob- 
viously to the advantage of California to produce cotton that will 
not need to enter into competition with the South, such as the 
Egyptian cotton, which our manufacturers are importing on a scale 
of many millions of dollars every year. All previous records were 
exceeded in 1916, with importations amounting to about 350.000 
bales, valued at more than $35,000,000. 
The rapidly increasing demand for Egyptian and other superior 
types of cotton is due to a variety of causes, the most important 
being, undoubtedly, the enormous proportions attained by the auto- 
mobile tire-fabric industry and the greater attention being given by 
manufacturers, dealers, and the public generally to the fact that 
strength and durability of fabrics depend very largely on the quality 
of the cotton fiber. Kecognition of this fundamental fact in rela- 
tion to automobile tires in time may be reflected in other branches 
of the textile industry and in turn lead eventually to a general elimi- 
nation of the enormous waste of industrial effort involved in the 
production, manufacture, and use of weak, inferior fiber. 
Xew communities can secure a great advantage in the production 
of long-staple cotton by limiting themselves to the planting of a 
single superior variety. In the older parts of the cotton belt, where 
