Cotton

Cotton growers, tossed about by the wild selling market of a fortnight ago (TIME, Oct. 25), regained their equilibrium during the last week, although many still remained, figuratively, on all fours.

The Crop. The Government last week forecast a crop of 17,454,000 bales. The previous record year was 1914 with 16,134,000 bales. Last year there were 16,104,000.

Prices wobbled very.little during the week. They averaged slightly under 12 1/2c a pound. The highest price which cotton ever brought was 38c a pound, at New Orleans in 1920. The present rate is slightly more than half the 23c average for last year and slightly less than the 12.3c average for the 1909-14 period.

Reaction. The cry started a month ago will continue a long time. In Texas, growers have already started to plow partly picked cotton fields for the sowing of fall small grains. Discouraged tenant farmers throughout the South are abandoning unpicked cotton for paying jobs in towns and cities. Transient labor is scarce. There are few gleaners.

Relief. Eugene Meyer Jr., Chairman of President Coolidge's farm relief commission and Albert Calvin Williams, Chairman of the Federal farm loan board, began the President's relief plans by starting the formation of nine cotton finance corporations to serve twelve Southern states. These corporations will have a total capitalization of $16,000,000, against which the Government will loan $160,000,000 toward the storage of cotton. Farmers may borrow nine cents a pound on properly stored staple. Next year's acreage must be curtailed and diversified with crops; other than cotton.*

*In 1914, when analogous overproduction occurred, the relief cry was "Buy a Bale." The present cry is "Wear Cotton." Last week the only woman judge in the South, Virginia Henry Mayfield, at Birmingham, put out a reason: The adoption by southern women of more cotton clothing, instead of sensuous silk, would reduce work in the divorce courts; the return to past styles would give contentment in the home and aid to the farmer.