Cotton Scarcity

While cotton planters and governmental authorities debate the best way of exterminating the boll weevil, the returns from this year's admittedly "short" crop are beginning to assume definiteness. Cotton ginned prior to Oct. 18 totaled 6,400,579 bales, compared with 6,978,321 last year. Evidently, as these figures show, there has been no rush this year to send the present cotton crop to market, partly, perhaps, because it is being withheld from sale in the hopes of obtaining higher prices later on, but mainly because there is less cotton than usual to market.

It is this " statistically strong" position of cotton that accounts for the recent tendency toward higher prices in future contracts. On the New York Cotton Exchange the October contracts expired at the highest levels of the year, around 31 1/2 and the later December, January, March and May options also arose to over 30f-c-.

The high cotton prices should prove very profitable to those Southern planters who fought the boll weevil with sufficient success to bring in a good crop. It is, however, true that the Northern cotton mills are closing under the effects of a buyers' strike; the consumption of cotton will probably not increase greatly in the near future. But surplus stocks are now relatively small, and present high cotton prices can scarcely be rendered until larger production of the raw cotton is attained.