OCR Text |
Show COTTON STATUS AFTER WAR Stocks to Be Replenished and New Uses for Staple Are Developing One After Another. One thing that has been demonstrated demonstrat-ed by the experience of the last year is that the world requires American cotton in times of war as in times of peace, the Savannah News observes. New uses for cotton are developing one after another, and the new ust. once established, cotton seems at once to become indispensable for the purpose. pur-pose. Cotton is now used in substitution substitu-tion for many commodities of apparently appar-ently totally different characteristics from its own, and is found not only cheaper in cost but superior in efficiency. ef-ficiency. Normal uses of cotton are naturally much interfered with by a great war. In some cases this becomes obligatory from the scarcity of the staple, together to-gether with the more compulsory requirements re-quirements for war purposes. No one can calculate how long the people of any country or all countries could manage to get along with practically no additions to pre-existing stocks of manufactured cotton goods. They are first the supplies already in the hands of final consumers, then the stocks in the hands of retailers, enormous enor-mous in the aggregate; finally the larger individual stocks, held by wholesale dealers and manufacturers It is evident that the time through which all these supplies can be forced to last is very elastic and can be much prolonged. But the scarcity must become acute after a while; then the need for fresb supplies will be all the more urgent from having been so long repressed. The end of the war will bring not merely the restoration of normal uses but the call for replenishment of depleted de-pleted stocks everywhere. A surplus of cotton was carried over last year; it was an unwieldy surplus under ordinary or-dinary conditions, the largest ever known in the history of the trade. But f it was a moderate surplus in comparison compari-son with the great inroads made upon manufactured stocks. |