H. G. Hastings & Co., Seedsmen, Atlanta, Georgia. 
11 
SURE CROP STANDS TEST OF TIME 
We iutroduced Sure Crop Cotton eleven years ago and all through 
these years it has been one of the steadiest sellers we have had. 
During that time probably one hundred or more alleged varieties 
of cotton have been introduced, most of them with a great flourish 
of advertising proclaiming them to be “world-beaters,” best-of-alls, 
etc. Where are they now? You can count on the fingers of one 
hand the number that have come anywhere near “making good” in 
these ten years and are now known generally. 
Why do so few of these introductions get general public approv- 
al? Because they have nothing back of them in “breeding” and 
growth. They have served their purpose when the promoter or in- 
troducer has unloaded on the public his seed for a year or so, gets 
tired of taking care of his crops and lets it go. 
Such is not the history of Hastings’ Sure Crop Cotton. It was a 
mighty good cotton eleven years ago, but it has steadily been work- 
ed on and bred up each year since then. Every year we made it 
more regular in growth; each year saw more bolls and bigger bolls 
with better length and per cent of lint; every year customers came 
back to us for new pure seed of Sure Crop to renew their planting 
stock. 
Sure Crop Cotton has stood the test of time simply because we 
kept working it up to something better year by year instead of 
letting it run down as is the common practice. 
Sure Crop Cotton of 3913 is as much better than the Sure Crop 
Cotton we introduced in 1902 as the Sure Crop Cotton of 1902 
was ahead of the “run of the gin” seed of 1902, that came from any 
sorry negro renter’s crop. There is high quality in every pound 
and bushel of it in our warehouses here in Atlanta. Every seed of 
Sure Crop is chuck full of reproducing power, just the kind of re- 
producing power you need on your place to make good paying 
crops in any kind of a growing season. 
We know exactly what is in every bushel of Sure Crop seed for 
every bushel of it we have for sale was grown on the Hastings Farm. 
Some Alabama Experiences with Sure Crop Cotton 
“Sure Crop Cotton is the best I have ever seen to take one year after another. It will come as near making a crop every year as any 
I ever saw and I wouldn’t use any other. I have gotten the top of the market for every bale I have made and it is the easiest cotton 
to pick I ever had and it won’t fall out from rain and wind like other kinds do.” — Joseph E. Prince. Lee Co., Alabama. 
“Regarding Hastings’ Sure Crop Cotton I think it is the stuff wdth which 1 will make from 1% to 2 bales per acre. It is ahead of 
anything I have ever used. I used about the same amount of fertilizer I have been used to using and I will make much more cotton. 
I can recommend your Sure Crop. I think the Hastings’ Prolific Corn I bought of you is fine. I will make 75 to 100 bushels to the 
acre and it makes the best bread I ever used.” — S. W. AVatts. 
FlUIOrO Crop Cotton: Pound, postpaid, 35 cents; 3 pounds, postpaid to your address, ?1.00; peck, by express or freight, not 
p If 1 1 . r' \ prepaid, 60 cents; bushel (30 lbs., Georgia legal weight), not prepaid, $1.75; 10 bushels, not prepaid, $15.00; 100 pounds, not 
• prepaid, $5.00. Freight rate to Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas points. $1.08 per 100 pounds. 
Cotton Variety Names Mean Nothing 
We have wanted to say something on this point for several years. It’s a practically true statement that every seed buying farmer 
ought to realize. It is not only true of cotton, but also of other things. 
We are in the seed business to make our living, growing and selling seed. We have hundreds of thousands of customers. Ours is the 
only firm in this country maintaining a seed and plant breeding department in connection with the seed business. It costs us a great 
deal more money to produce a well bred, high grade article of seed, fit to plant, than it does seed from an ordinary farm cotton or 
corn crop. 
Now it’s human nature for you and hundreds of thousands of other Southern farmers to want to get planting seed for less money 
than the prices we ask. We have no quarrel with any man on that score. It’s also human nature for us to want to get the cost of our 
seed breeding and seed growing, and a profit added, for our seeds, and the right kind of seed growing, seed selling and handling is a 
great deal more expensive than nine hundred and ninety-nine out of one thousand of you dream. 
We started out by saying this: COTTON VARIETY NAMES MEAN NOTHING, and we stand by it absolutely, so far as it applies 
to regularity of growth, reasonable purity of the seed and proliflcness of the plants, or their producing power. 
Following out the human nature which is a part of you, you see, for instance, some Mortgage Lifter or Sure Crop Cotton listed in. this 
catalogue at say, $1.50 per bushel, in 10 bushel lots. It looks like a mighty big price when you have just sold your own seed to an oil 
mill buyer at 30 or 35 cents per bushel. You want some Mortgage Lifter Cotton, however. You find in looking over your agricultural 
papers or some other catalogue that some one else is advertising Mortgage Lifter or some other Hastings’ variety at $1.00 per bushel 
or sometimes less. Your natural conclusion is that there is a chance to save money. Possibly a neighbor of yours got seed from Has- 
tings two or three years before and you will go over to his farm and buy some seed from him at 75 cents or $1.00 per bushel and save- 
money. It’s true that you do save a little money in purchase price; possibly 50 or 75 cents on the bushel necessary to plant an acre. 
Do you save money though on the entire transaction? You do not. Y^ou are a loser every time in a deal like that. Why? Because 
such seed planted and grown under even good cultivation will make 2P0 to 300 pounds less seed cotton per acre than will seed which 
we produce under our system of breeding and seed growing. 
This does not take into consideration the further loss you get through mixtures that invariably occur in public gins. It is- an abso- 
lute impossibility to keep seed anywhere near pure with the present system of piiblic ginning. 
When you buy seed of Mortgage Lifter, Sure Crop or any other variety of cotton from an advertising farmer or a cut-price seed deal- 
er at a lower price, you are not really buying Hastings’ cotton seed, you are simply buying a variety name at a lower prices You are 
not getting the same or as good seed as we would sell you by a long shot and you are the loser when your crop is harvested. 
Variety names mean little or nothing under these circumstances. The real thing that you want to buy is the reproducing power in 
the seed; the power in that seed to make you 100, 200 or even 250 pounds more lint cotton per acre with the same cost of labor and fer- 
tilizer that you were putting into the crop before. That is the only reason on God’s green earth why you should spend money for seed 
with us or anyone else. The idea in seed-buying is to get something better than you have already. You can never buy a first-class - 
mule for $100.00 when the mule market says “$200.00.” You can’t get a pair of good calfskin shoes for a “brogan” price. You can’t buj' 
a first-class, pure bred Berkshire pig for a “razorback shoat” price and you do not expect to. Then why expect that you can do any 
different in cotton seed or any other kind of seed-buying? It’s not a question of the seed cost at first that really counts. It’s what you 
get out of it in the crop that counts; where the profit to you on the transaction comes in. If you want to buy, for instance, Broadwell 
cotton, the place to buy it is not from Hastings or a farmer who advertises it, but from Broadwell himself. The place to buy real; 
genuine cotton seed or seed corn of the Hastings varieties is from Hastings and not from any Tom, Dick or Harry with no seed grow- 
ing or selling reputation to sustain and who is ninety-nine times out of one hundred only selling you a variety name instead of seed 
with the right producing power and it’s the producing power rather than the name that you want to buy. These things are facts. If ^ 
you will stop and think you will know they are facts. 
Quit buying variety names at a cut price if you have been doing it in the past, and go to headquarters for the real thing? Hastings, 
for Hastings’ varieties; to others who are known producers and breeders for their particular kinds or varieties. In that way you are 
safe and in that way only. Variety names mean little or nothing. It’s not what a variety is called that really interests you, it's udiat. 
it actually is in producing power in your fields. 
