"Drop-Half-a-Crop"

A vexed, vituperative Texas Legislature grappled its cotton problem last week. While the insistent voice of Louisiana's red-headed Governor Huey Pierce Long barked annoyingly through loudspeakers, while the Governors of a half-dozen other cotton Slates waited anxiously to see what the Stale which produces 33% of U. S. cotton would do, Texas repudiated Governor Long's dramatic "Drop-a-Crop" plan and offered to the South a less drastic solution: reduction of the next two years' cotton production to one-half its 1931 level. But first the Texas Legislature paid its respects to its neighboring Governor in a Senate resolution that called him "a consumate [sic] liar."

As the Texas Legislature met it seemed as if Governor Long were more popular in Texas than its own Governor, who was expected to veto the Long plan if it were passed (TIME, Sept. 21). Then Governor Long went too far in his exhortations. He declared the Texas Legislature was being swayed by paid lobbyists, "blandished with wine, women and money, bought like a sack of corn, paid off like a slot machine."

indignation gripped the Texas lawmakers. Up rose Representative T. H. McGregor of Austin, an orator of the wild old school, to defend the honor of his House. He called Huey Long "drunk with ignorance and power . . . arrogantly braying from Louisiana. . . . This is the first time in history that ignorance, impudence and insolence combined have crossed the State line and the people of Texas been insulted by political ambition and demagoguery. . . . Have we reached the point in Texas when the Governor of Louisiana can indict the Texas Legislature . . . and let the Governor of Louisiana get away with it?''

"No!" cried the House, whereupon the Senate invited Mr. McGregor to repeat his oration in the upper Chamber and the House went to hear it again.

Next day the Senate passed the following resolution and defeated an amendment to couch it in "more decent language" :

Whereas, [Governor Long's] statement is not only untrue but carries the vice of a lie and the venom of a liar. . . . Therefore, beit resolved, by the Senate of Texas, the House concurring, that the . . . statement of Huey P. Long, Governor of the State of Louisiana, is a lie made out of the whole cloth, and its author is a consumate [sic] liar.

In Baton Rouge, Governor Long went to the radio, announced he was through with the whole fight, said he had done his best "with the salvation of the South my only motive."

Meanwhile: In South Carolina the House and Senate both passed a "Drop-a-Crop" plan. In Georgia Governor Richard B. Russell Jr. had announced that a majority of his farmers favored it. Governor Harvey Parnell of Arkansas had sent a delegation to Austin to urge it. With the plan already doomed to defeat through Texas' failure to adopt it. Governor Long said he would declare the Louisiana bill "null and void and inoperative." Oklahoma cotton growers agreed to follow Texas. Alabama and Mississippi were still lukewarm. North Carolina's Governor Oliver Max Gardner announced that no session of his General Assembly would be called "to completely abandon the growing of cotton." His points: 1) The trouble with U. S. cotton is not quantity but quality. 2) The South must learn to compete in the world market, which the U. S. planter dominates less & less.*

* World Cotton Production: 1929-30 1928-29 bales bales

U.S. 14,828,000 14,478,000 India 4,402,000 4,863,000 Egypt 1,725,000 1,672,000 Russia 1,310,000 1,250,000 Other Countries 4,035,000 3,837,000

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