Cotton Group Warned Only
Hope Is Co-Operative Control
Cotton producers, staggering through
a crisis, with the price of their staple
falling below the cost of production
in the midst of general prosperity,
again are being warned by Southern
newspapers that their only hope for
the future lies in co-operative control
of production and marketing.
“Memory of last year’s big crop and
good prices was too vivid,” says the j
New Orleans Item-Tribune. "The
farmers increased their acreage. Next
year, after this year’s bitter experi
ence, they may reduce it. Then the
price may rise. And that will inspire
them the following year to overplant
again. It is a vicious circle, an eco
nomic folly. The South will not he
Independent or its prosperity sound
until this is broken.”
“Southern farmers have passed
through several crises similar to the
present, in which cotton prices pre
vailing are under the cost of produc
tion,” explains the Birmingham News,
“hut what makes the immediate ex
tremity absolutely unique in the his- j
tory of Southern economics is that at
this time the price of nearly every
other commodity is higher than
normal. In other years, when sur
pluses of cotton appeared, American
Industrials were at low ebb. In this
year there is a high tide of prosperity
save only among those who carry on
the most ancient and essential indus
try of all—agriculture. That is a
strange state of affairs. It- does not
help matters to grant that the pres
ent situation is in very large part the
fault of the farmers, that they them
selves are to blame for the overpro
duction-—which, of course, they are.
