COTTON WAREHOUSE CONSTRUCTION. 37 
comparatively little business and eventually fail because the banks 
are not willing to advance money on cotton stored with them. This 
should certainly be taken into consideration when preparing to build 
a warehouse. If satisfactory financial connections can not be 
arranged, the chances are that the undertaking will prove a disap- 
pointment and the promoters will necessarily lose by making such an 
investment. 
COOPERATION OF FARMERS. 
Other investigations ' have shown conclusively that most of the 
small warehouses located near the points of production do not pay 
for the operating expenses and deterioration of the property. For 
this reason very few companies in the small towns are inclined to 
operate warehouses that give adequate service. If the farmers in 
such a community wish to be assured of storage service at all times, 
they should form cooperative associations and build their own stor- 
age houses. In most cases such associations would not be expected 
to pay any dividends, but the farmers would be sure that they would 
have available storage space at all times, and in this way they would 
be independent of factors, merchants, and others who now control 
most of the storage space. If the farmers in such communities 
would go further and organize selling associations, 1t would be pos- 
sible to employ an experienced cotton man who would be able to 
market the cotton more profitably than is now done. The cotton 
mills are saving considerable sums of money by cooperation in insur- 
ance. The mutual companies insure cotton belonging to mills for 
much less than it is necessary to pay when cotton is stored in a 
public warehouse. There is no reason why farmers should not 
save by cooperating in building and insuring their own cotton ware- 
houses. 
CONCLUSION. 
An adequate system of storage houses is one of the most impera- 
tive needs of the South. Such an improvement would bring about 
= annual saving of millions of dollars from what is usually called 
“country damage.” This change would also eventually bring about 
many reforms in the present method of marketing cotton. In addi- 
tion to cotton, the South annually handles products worth hundreds 
of millions of dollars that would be stored if it were possible to do so 
under favorable conditions. There is also a great demand for storage 
space for merchandise and various manufactured products, such as 
fertilizers and farm machinery. 
In concluding this discussion of the construction of warehouses, it 
is urged again ‘that i it 1s 3 of 38 greatest importance that w arehouses 
1 Nixon, Robert L. Cotton Warehouses: Storage Facilities now Available in the South. Bulletin 216, 
U.S. Department of Agriculture. 1915. : 
