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Show -T- The Revolt A.gainst King Cotton By Frederic J. Haskin. -I ; f COLUMBIA, S. C, March 31. A ragged hobo stopped a -citizen of this place on the street yesterday and asked for alms, seying that he was starving. The Columbia Co-lumbia man took this as a tlur on his native state. "Impossible!" he declared. "Xo man that's able to get around can stare in South Carolina." And it's about true. If you can scratch the soil and throw a handful of seed you can get a crop in this land of fertile acres and long growing season. Crop failures arc almost unknown; there are no long winters; good land is cheap and abundant. They ht-.ve great success here in raising crops, and always have had. Selling them is the problem, and the Carolinians are at work on that problem now. Briefly, the trouble is too much cotton. cot-ton. And the solution, in the opinion of local authorities, is to raise less cotton and more of everything else. This 'is not new as a suggestion, but at present a great campaign is going forward to put the suggestion into effect. The southern farmer is coming to realize at last that King Cotton is a despot and that nothing short of revolution will unseat him. This does not mean that there is a strike against raising cotton. It means that the southern planter is tired of being be-ing dependent upon the vagaries of the cotton crop, and of being entirelv at its mercy. He is going to have other cards to play in his game with nature and the market. Add especially with the market. The planter is tired of taking what he can get. Hp is now determined to get what- he can take. In a word, he intends ot exercise exer-cise an influence upon the price at which his cotton is sold. Tlio pian now being put forward is to plant only as much cotton this vear as can he well fertilized and cultivated and to plant the rest of the land in olher crops. Meetings are now being held in all parts of the state for the double purpose pur-pose of explaining present conditions to I toe farmers, and getting them to cooperate cooper-ate in this plan, which is expected to reduce re-duce the acreage of cotton bv about one-third. one-third. In the present cotton situation there is nn argument for reducing the crop which every planter can appreciate, am! the force of which can scarcely ))e a,.,, i,v the mi'.iowner ami ultimate consume'-who consume'-who stand to lose by a smaller production of cotton. All the world needs cotton, we are told And yet of the last year's crop of about lourtecn hundred thousand bales in this slate, about, seven hundred thousand remain re-main unsold. And the market is failiiv all the time. No one can predict what ft will he next winter. But it is obtain that anotaer big cotton crop will not improve it Just as long as the cotton planter iK lorced to rely upon tire law of sunplv and demand for a fair price, he is going 'to he compelled, to keep the demand up hv keeping trie supply down. That is the locie or toe present movement Cotton seed is su:ua,sed to f.;i for enough to pav f, ,- pU.M!.g ;,nd winning of a crop. Thus tile cotton, to make a paradox, is velvet. As J,,m; as the M"V-ernment-fixed price of J71 a ton for cottonseed cot-tonseed prevailed, eoiton was velvet Tho only trouble is that, with the sia-ning 'of L')'-' armistice, the market for eoiton seed at f.l a ton came to an end. x,j one will buy it at that price. It's hard enough to 'sell at any price. The cotton seed oil companies have their tanks full, and are calmly waiting for the price to come down before buying any more. They realize that another lartrc cotton crop cannot fail to bring tliern a large supply of cheap cotton seed. But maybe there won't be any large cotton crop next year. Then the price won't come down. So figures the planter. Anutlier argument which tells with the planter is in tiie prices he pays for his supplies. The cost to- him of machinery, tools, food, and nearly every other commodity com-modity does not seem to fluctuate, according accord-ing to conditions, in anything like the way the price of cotton fluctuates. Ih other words, the manufacturers have, to a great extent, fixed the price of 'their products.t Now where will the planter come out unless he, too, can fix, or at least stabilize, the price of his product? While the price of cotton tends to fluctuate fluc-tuate downward, the price of supplies, labor la-bor and everything else entering into the making of a crop, tends to fluctuate upward, up-ward, so far as it fluctuates at all. With fertilizer selling at ?i;s a ton, labor getting get-ting $2 a day. and the cost of picking cotton about $.18 a ton, it Is no longer possible pos-sible to make a profit on cotton at 10 or 15 cents. This new movement Is not hacked bv tiie planters alone. It is backed also bv merchants, hankers and business men. And that these men are in earnest, and looking a long way ahead, is proved by the fact that main- of them stand to lose, for a time at least, l,v this effort to stabilize sta-bilize cotton prices. The planter's banker, his commission man and his merchant have all made monev bv the vagaries of the cotton price. The planter himself is generally the only sure loser. He is the last man to learn that cotton is going up, and the first to know that it has 'gone down. The rising market, he alwavs hears, is merely a flash of speculation There is nothing to It. he is assured. On the other hand, a falling market is a permanent per-manent condition no telling how long It will last. Hotter sell before the hottom drops out. This is the kind of advice the planter gets. Vet on his prosperity the prosperity of the whele country depends. The banker ami commission man and mcrehrmt have awakened to litis faet. That is whv they are back of the, movement for less col-ton col-ton and more diversified farming In the, cotton crop, these men" 'of business busi-ness have be,,n handling verv volatile security. They have needed n lot of protectant pro-tectant 1 lie,- have gotten it. And the Planter has paal for it. When cotton went up. the business men tnnk most of the profit, an.l when it went down, the planter plant-er took most of the loss, ruder this svs-t.-n, ti,0 aoose that lavs the golden cge- is rcMless tU b0 U r'01' hinl' "''Shty line important faetor in every eoiton situation is 'be nearo. lie I, ess.-.ntinl at the fields. And the negro, during the n h o eTa-"' '' s ''"P" ","'1" to ''' rk n the munition laeh.rlrs. Quite a few 'f him are sttll t,,.. b,,rn"iu oe arinv. r the ,Id. made a rep Ita '''' wr"'k "'"m sum,,, to sunsat n about ,li ,-ents a dav. An, I that iv a , 0 tlie ,,,., ilim,.,:lnt faetors in Uu, ni - 1 r 1 1 l"-eent eotlon oo?ton".;:r,Sr,!"H to reduce the -on n , n , m.,.,.Msarlh. iieeonipaiiii.,1 ' n movement lo liirrva-a. the , '" ". The fanning e" ,,'r,H a7e urging the farmers to plant old cotton fields in peas and beans, which restore the land by fixing nitrogen, and also in grasses. Nearly any crop you choose to plant will grow in this country. lv natural mixed farming count:-', v mixed farming country It is to become. J |