OCR Text |
Show TELL SIZE OF COTTON CROP Remarkable How Close People Living in South Come in Their Guesses Before the Picking Season. (By JOHN J. NEWMAN, Washington. D. C.) It Is remarkable to And how close the government comes to ascertaining the size of the cotton crop a month or two before the picking season and still more remarkable how close people peo-ple living in the South come in their guesses. I was in Georgia in lay and asked several cotton men about the probable size of this year's crop. The reply in each case was between 12.000.000 and 13, 000,000 bales. Later on (he United States agricultural department estimated the crop at 12.500,000. In July 1 met a cotton man from Texas In Washington and when I asked him about the crop, he said it would be slightly under I2.n00,000 bales. This same man came within about 500.000 bales of calling the figures on the record-breaking crop in 19M two months before the crop had matured. I am told that the decrease in the use by fertilizer accounts more for the falling off in this year's crop than the decreased acreage, although thnt amounts to IS per cent. |