H. G. Hastings & Co., Seedsmen, Atlanta, Georgia. 
7 
AND ITS VERY GREAT VALUE TO YOU 
It may seem a long call from our plant-breeding and seed-grow- 
ing work to your farm but it isn’t. 
We will be perfectly frank and open with you. We didn’t establish 
this Plant-Breeding Department and the Hastings Farm because we 
specially wanted to, but just because we had to or else be content 
with furnishing our friends the same low grade, inferior, mixed seed 
of cotton, corn and other Southern staple crops that was (and is) 
being sold, simply because nobody was breeding it up and growing 
it right. 
It has always been the Hastings business policy to keep consider- 
ably ahead of the procession. We studied these special points of the 
business for years. We were not satisfied with the cotton seed, corn, 
oats, etc., that we were sending out, although they were the very 
best obtainable in the South at that time. 
We tried to get our contract growers to do the right kind of seed- 
growing. We failed, for every time the extra work necessary showed 
up Mr. Contract Grower would kick over the traces. In a word, we 
found it impossible to get this class of work done by others. The 
only thing left was to do it ourselves, and we are doing it. 
It isn’t cheap work. It costs thousands upon thousands of extra 
dollars each year, but we are getting results which we are passing 
along to you every time you order seed from us. Every seed buying 
customer gets the benefit of this breeding work and our present 
highly organized seed-growing operations with thousands of acres 
under direct control, and an independent ginning system, where only 
one variety is ginned each season. We don’t claim to be perfect, for 
plant-breeding is never finished, but each year shows marked im- 
provement in our stocks. 
It is certainly a satisfaction to us to have friends come into our 
store or write us saying, “Mr. Hastings, I never made over a bale 
of cotton per acre before. With your cotton I got from a 
bale and a half to two bales per acre in my crop and my neighbors 
were astonished.” 
That kind of testimony comes from people planting our seed, the 
quality and prolificuess of that seed being directly the result of our 
Plant-Breeding and Growing Work on the Hastings Farm. 
MB. H, G. HASTIxVGS IN A FIELD OF UNION BIG 
The kind and quality of our Plant-Breeding work is not being 
equalled anywhere in the world. 
Officials of the United States Department of Agriculture haye yisit- 
ed us in past years and have made a very close examination of it. 
They tell us that it is the best they have ever seen. Representatives 
of foreign governments have inspected it this past year, and after 
seeing the fields of other so-called cotton seed growers and com- 
paring them with ours, they ended up by placing large orders with 
us for shipment this winter. 
This work of ours is getting an international reputation. It’s 
BOLL, COTTON GROWING ON HASTINGS' FARM. 
“making good” in the fullest sense of the word and we certainly 
wish it were possible for each one of you to carefully inspect it dur- 
ing late summer and fall each year when the crops near maturitv. 
Every one to whom this catalogue goes can get the benefit of it. 
Its results, in the shape of highly bred and rightly grown seed, are 
just as easily obtainable by the humblest “one horse” farmer as 
the.y are by the strongest government on earth with hundreds of 
millions of dollars back of it. , 
However our work is valuable to you only if you use it. Other* 
wise it isn’t worth a cent to you. 
