14 BULLETIN 533, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
dividuals. Failure to maintain the purity of stocks is the basis of 
the popular belief that varieties of cotton soon run out. No variety 
should be expected to remain uniform unless selection is continued 
and admixture with other varieties prevented. 
In addition to this primary consideration of maintaining the 
purity and uniformity of varieties, organized communities can deal 
to better advantage with most of the problems of production and 
marketing of the crop. Cultural methods are likely to be much 
better understood and more skillfully applied in a community where 
only one kind of cotton is grown and differences between varieties 
are not being confused with effects of cultural methods, soils, or sea- 
sonal conditions. 
Marketing problems are also greatly simplified in communities 
that can offer commercial quantities of one superior variety of cot- 
ton. The classing of the cotton is a function of the community 
organization, whether done by local talent or by an expert employed 
by the community. Classing is necessary not only for selling the 
cotton at its true value, but for using the bales as security for loans, 
in case the farmer lacks ready money to meet the cost of picking or 
wishes to hold his cotton for better prices. Communities that have 
a regular system of classing and warehousing their cotton are able 
to arrange for loans on better terms than the individual farmer. 
Community action is also very important in relation to insect pests 
or plant diseases. Measures of protection that can be expected to do 
very little good if applied only by scattering individual farmers may 
be rendered very effective if used by the entire community. This is 
notably true of the precautions that are advised against the boll 
weevil, but is likely to be equally so with any other parasite or dis- 
ease that may appear in any district. If only a few of the parasitic 
insects or diseased plants are destroyed, the farmer who takes the 
precautions may fare no better than his more careless neighbors, but 
if it were possible to get action by the entire community the effect of 
any remedial measure would be definitely shown. 
CONCLUSIONS. 
Cotton was grown in California half a century ago, but the early 
attempts were made on a basis of direct competition with the South, 
which could not be maintained when normal conditions had been 
reestablished after the Civil War. The present possibilities of de- 
velopment of cotton culture in California lie in the direction of pro- 
ducing Egyptian or other special types of long-staple cotton. The 
demand for cotton of the Egyptian type is increasing rapidly ami 
not likely to be met by increased production in Egypt, where the 
crop is endangered by the invasion of a new insect pest. 
