The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 6, 1918, Page 14

'.lKing Cotton Oppreges All but Buyers Sampling Graft, Wall Street Control and the Credit Merchant System Deprive BY E. B. FUSSELL IT wasn’t for cotton and the “sunny South” half of the song writers and vaudeville perform- ers in the United States would be out of business. Think of the number of songs about “fields of snowy white,” “dark- ies singing, banjos ringing,” “way down south in Dixie,” etc. The idea that the average person gets about the South is that life is one continual round of song and pleasure, with the farmer sitting on his veranda in the shade, being entertained by the darkies singing and dancing and the cotton, some- how, some way, managing to grow and be harvested without work. But in fact it is not just like the songs have it. The southern darkies are a light-hearted lot and manage to get a good deal of pleasure out of life. But southern cotton farmers, or the farmers of Texas, at least, do not find life an unbroken round of gayety. They find life hard work the year around in an attempt to make a living and-thou- sands, every year, don’t succeed in making a living. More than half the farms in the state now are worked by tenants and thousands of home owners lose their places and become tenants every year. PESTS THAT TROUBLE - THE COTTON GROWER . by the product of Texas farms. The Texas cotton farmer is troubled by the boll weevil, the landlord, the credit merchant, the cot- ton factor, the gin mill, the compress and the cot- ton oil mill, in addition to drouth, labor troubles and the like. The federal government is doing what it can to rid him of the pest of the boll weevil. Nobody is paying any particular attention to the credit merchants, the cotton factor and the other pests except the farmer himself. Every one knows that the spinning mills of Eng- land and the eastern United States are kept busy The cotton is picked by hand and packed in 500-pound bales. A | bale from two acres is a good crop. Then the Texas | farmer hauls his bale to town. He dumps it on | a big lot set aside for that purpose and hunts up | a cotton buyer, or the buyer hunts him. Down in New Orleans and Galveston are cotton exchanges, operated by speculators as in the grain exchanges of the North. The exchanges daily an- ' nounce the price of cotton, based on cotton with a one-inch fiber known as “middling” cotton. Cotton with a longer fiber is worth more, a 1 1-16-inch “staple” or fiber at present commands a 1%-cent premium over “middling” cotton, a 1%-inch staple commands a 4-cent premium, and a 1 8-16-inch staple a 10-cent premium. WHAT THE GROWER AND THE “HANDLERS” GET However, when the Texas farmer sells his cot- - ton it is almost all as “hog cotton,” that is, it is sold at the market price for middling cotton, with As a matter of fact, most of the a one-inch fiber. . long fiber cotton. . though the average Texas cotton ranges be- tween a 1 1-16 and a 135-inch fiber. When the buyers get the cotton and sort it over, preliminary to its sale to spinnng mills, they take credit for this The growers of the cotton, under the conditions that exist in Texas to- day, do not get it. The big profit in cot- ton always has gone to the handlers and manu- facturers, not to the farmers. This year, al- price received. by the growers for an exceed- ingly short crop was far above the average, is no exception to the rule. Here are some figures furnished by M. L. Rice, government cotton grader in Texas: Average price to grower for Texas cotton, 1917 crop...27 Cost to manu- facture one pound of cot- ton into six yards cloth.121% cents cents Total ..... 39% cents Sale price of six yards of cloth at 14% cents ...... 87 Minus cost of cotton and manufacture 39% cents Leaves for profits to ‘manufactur- er, railroads, jobbers, re- tailer .and other mid- N dlemen.....47% ceats At this rate the profit on a bale of 500 pounds will be $237.50. Ordinarily the bare cost of raising cotton has been placed at 9 cents a-‘pound. This figure would cover only the expenses of seed, hired labor, food . for the farmer and feed for his stock. It would not cover such items as the value of his own labor, that of his family, interest on his in- negro hand labor. in 500-pound bales. shipping charges. - vestment . and depreciation. These items have " A typical Texas cotton field before the harvest. PAGE FOURTEEN Texas of the Riches That Belong There Weighing the cotton in the field. Most of the southern cotton is picked by The pickers are paid by weight. the gin where the seed is separated from the fiber and the fiber then is packed " Before the bales are shipped to the spinning mills they' go to a compress which presses them into a more compact mass to save The cotton then goes to never been figured out definitely in past years; though in 1907 the Farmers’ union of Texas be-- lieved that 15 cents a pound would cover all ex- penses and started to hold for that price. How the Wall street panic broke up the cotton holding movement was told in the Leader some weeks ago. SPECULATORS REAP PROFIT ON PRICE INCREASES During the last year, however, every item enter- ing into the cost of raising cotton has increased by leaps and bounds. A state meeting of Texas farmers last year estimated the cost of the 1917 crop at 30 cents a pound. This was before the . erop was harvested. After this figure was arrived .at, half of Texas was burned out by an unusually severe drouth. It is probable that the actual cost of .all cotton produced in Texas last year averaged at least 40 cents. > . Twenty-seven cents probably represents the _average price paid to growers for 1917 cotton. Many sales were made as low as 20 cents. But every cotton yard in the South eontains hun- dreds or thousands of bales of cotton that are being held by speculators, the farmers having been com- pelled to sell. The price was 31 cents when the writer of this article was in Texas, and the price was c'imbing day by day. But, as usual, the specu- lator and not the farmer was reaping the benefit. Why is the farmer compelled to sel his cotton = without being able to hold it for the advance in ‘price? One reason is that most of the farmers are in debt to ‘“credit merchants,” as they are ‘ gives the farmer a line of credit at the beginning of the year . and charges interest from the date -of the begin- known in the South. The merchant ning of the credit, though the farmer may not get ‘the bulk of his supplies until ‘six or eight months . later. An investigation recently made by a re- 7 R \