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Show COTTON'S UPS AND DOWNS. Few basic commodities have shown such extreme fluctuations in price as has cotton, ranging from $1.90 a pound to a fraction less than 5 cents. The highest price paid for cotton since the world war was in 1920, when it brought 41 cents a pound. During the depression it reached the lowest price in 100 years, about 4.95 cents. The all-time high price was $1.90 in ISC 1, when the Civil war reduced the American crop to only 300,000 bales. The highest production was reached in the United States in 1926, approximately 18 million bales. The greatest return from any American crop was received in 1919, when 11,-420,763 11,-420,763 bales were produced and sold for a little more than two billion dollars. dol-lars. In 1931 a 17-million-bale crop brought only $485,611,000, or considerably consi-derably less than one-fourth as much as the smaller crop of 1919. An interesting experiment is the government's present policy of paying farmers to plow up a part of their; cotton crop, and the renting of cotton j land to keep it out of production. The heavy expense of this program, of course, must be borne by the general public through higher taxes and higher high-er prices for cotton goods. It takes a lot of will power to; match some wives' won't power. |