Bales Of Cotton Research Articles

Towards Self Sufliciency in Cotton

The Indian Union continues to import annually, about six to seven lakh bales of long staple cotton to meet her internal demand. The requirement of cotton in the coming years will largely depend on the per capita consumption of cloth by the ever growing population. The other factors contributing to the demand for cotton are the exports of cloth and the extra-factory consumption within the country.

The Wholesale Commission Business in the Alabama Black Belt, 1875-1917

N THE cotton states of the South, following the Civil War, the wholesale and commission business flourished. It was a part of the cotton credit system, which was the base of the economy in that region during the period 1875-1917. This study is concerned with the operation of that business in a part of Alabama known as Belt. It is an area of rich soil, which in earlier days had attracted planters and slaveholders. Although the Negro population is large, tending toward eighty percent, the name Black Belt is derived from the black limestone soil.1 The system of business in this section may well be considered typical of business in other old plantation areas of the South. A cotton farmer usually made credit arrangements with a general merchandise store, which extended credit for his household and farm supplies for a year's time. Security for the so-called advances was the farmer's cotton crop, and settlement was made at harvest time. The storekeepers themselves relied on long term credit. They bought supplies from the wholesale houses in the larger towns and cities, frequently selling their bales of cotton to the same dealers. Prior to the Civil War, Mobile was the chief cotton market and wholesale distributing center in Alabama,2 and after the war much of its trade was revived. In 1884-1885 Mobile had twenty-two cotton factors, eighteen cotton brokers and buyers, thirty-four commission merchants, eighteen wholesale grocers, three wholesale dry goods stores, four wholesale clothing houses, four wholesale dealers in cigars and tobacco, and five wholesale boot and shoe dealers.3 These merchants and traders

The Vicksburg tornado disaster.

It was 5:35, Saturday afternoon, Dec. 5. The weather was warm and humid, and dusk had begun to fall. The downtown stores were closing, and the buses were filling with homebound clerks and secretaries. The theatres still held scores of youngsters indulging in the Saturday cowboy matinee. At the Happyland Nursery, the little tots were being fed and dressed for their working parents to pick them up on their way home. The 32,000 inhabitants of Vicksburg went calmly about their usual tasks. Suddenly, from out of the west, roaring like 10 highballing freight trains, came a funnel-shaped swirling cloud—in the center, a tremendous vacuum capable of lifting the roofs from buildings, and, around the periphery, a screaming counterclockwise wind ranging an estimated 200 to 500 miles per hour. Crossing the Mississippi River and the Yazoo Canal, the storm hit the river front. The Union Cotton Compress warehouse turned to rubble, and 3,000 bales of cotton went up in smoke in the fire that followed. The Illinois Central Railroad roundhouse collapsed.

Studies on cotton dust in relation to byssinosis. I. Bacteria and fungi in cotton dust.

Thereisgeneral agreement thatbyssinosis is associated withtheinhalation ofcotton dust. Good descriptions ofthedisease havebeengiven bythe HomeOffice Departmental Committee onDustin CardRoomsintheir report (1932), byPrausnitz (1936), andbySchilling (1950). An extensive and complete review oftheliterature oncotton dustin relation toaffections oftherespiratory tract hasbeen prepared byCaminita, Baum,Neal, andSchneiter (1947). Thedustaffects thelungs, andthefirst symptomsarecough, afeeling oftightness inthe chest, andbreathlessness whichdevelop gradually after working forseveral years inthedusty atmosphere produced byopening bales ofcotton andby thecarding machines whichclean andcomb-out the fibres. Somepersons donotsuffer fromthis disease after alife-time ofexposure tothedust;those who do,findtheir symptoms areworseonMondays after aweek-end awayfromthemill. Thedisease is usually progressive, butsomeworkers suffer only on Mondaysduring thewholeoftheir working lives, without anyprogression. A change ofoccupation whichavoids exposure tothedust gives freedom fromsymptoms, butareturn tothedustyatmosphere ofthemillafter suchaperiod offreedom results immediately inareturn ofsymptoms.The pathological changes foundinthelater stages are those ofemphysema. Wherethedisease progresses symptomseventually persist throughout thewhole weekandfinally thereisincapacity forwork,

The Final Consumption of Cotton

Students of the cotton economy have dealt chiefly with aspects of supply. Emphasis has been laid upon crop control, production methods, and the intermediate stages of distribution. The basic demand for cotton, which stems from its ultimate uses, has been comparatively unknown to economic research. Is it realistic to hope that the total demand for cotton may be increased appreciably by conscious effort? The chief avenues for such effort are (1) control of consumer psychology, (2) strengthening of merchandising methods, (3) improvement of existing products, and (4) discovery of new uses. The potential effect of such enterprise cannot be appraised without a broad statistical picture of the uses of cotton, organized in terms of the quantity of the raw fiber which reaches ultimate consumption through each use. There has been a remarkable scarcity of such information. When fabrics leave the textile mills and fan out toward the myriad of finishing and fabricating plants through which they take form as consumer articles, the quantities of cotton involved are obscured in statistical reports. Frank A. McCord, in collaboration with the writer, has made a comprehensive study of statistical sources which give bases for estimates of the volume of cotton entering each final use. The fragmentary data thus obtained have been supplemented by contacts with 1,500 firms and individuals having first-hand knowledge of specific uses. The outcome is a publication, only recently released, which gives estimates of the volume of raw cotton required for consumer articles manufactured in the United States during the years 1937 and 1939.1 The study revealed 266 more or less homogeneous uses, each of which required as many as 100 bales of cotton per year. The 100 largest uses in 1939 are presented in Table I. Drastic shifts in consumption have subsequently been made as a consequence of the war, but the figures for 1939 provide a closer approach to a normal situation than later statistics would afford. Some of the chief implications of these statistics will be discussed briefly in this paper. Against this statistical background, some broad conclusions will be drawn regarding the possibilities of change in the total demand for cotton and the principles which should characterize a conscious effort in that field. No attempt will be made here to analyze the international aspects of cotton consumption or the effect of the current upheavals incident to the war. Neither will discussion be given to the connection between expanded cotton consumption and the best interests of society as a whole.

The Emergence of the First Social Order in the United States

T HERE. have been two conscious or unconscious social orders in the United States, where another great crisis is now forcing men to reexamine the philosophies of their predecessors. The first of these began with the Stuart Restoration and ended in I865; the second emerged slowly between I823 and i86I, took definite economic form in i865, and reached the acme of its power, if not its end, in I929. There are many serious thinkers in the American intellectual realm to-day who feel that a -third social order is slowly emerging, that democracy is going to be tried at last on a national scale. Hence it may not be out of order to describe and assess the first phase of 'the old plantation life which began when the Clarendon Code was applied to England, assumed a more dogmatic and arbitrary character soon after a clever New Englander showed the South Carolinians how to make a thousand bales of cotton grow where one had grown before, and came to its tragic end when Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. If one would understand the making of the social and cultural life of the Old South, he must study the troubled Europe from which our model-setting ancestors came during the seventeenth century. There the wars for religious libertie's were paralleled by the economic and social disasters due to the incoming shiploads of gold and silver from Central and South America. And while wars created artificial markets that suddenly collapsed, and the discovery of vast stores of the precious metals upset the value standards of the time, the rapid growth of English industry and drastic changes in agricultural life added to the social chaos from which hundreds of thousands of the more ambitious unemployed of Western Europe escaped to the stormy islands of the West Indies or the dangerous forests of North America. The common man of the

Rapid Estimation of Water-Content in Undisturbed Soil and in Bales of Cotton

AN instantaneous method for estimating the moisture content of soil, at any particular spot below the surface of the ground, even approximately, should be very useful in plant physiology, irrigation, and in soil science generally. The high dielectric constant of water suggested to me that the variations in capacity of a ‘leaky’ condenser permanently buried in the soil should serve this purpose.

Divisions of the Pine Forest Belt of East Texas

T VHE Southern Yellow Pine and Hardwood Forest extends into East Texas approximately to the 40-inch rainfall line and is the natural vegetation of an area varying from 80 to 120 miles in width and extending from the northern boundary of the state to the Gulf Coastal Prairies. The area of this district (23,000 square miles) is about ten times that of Delaware and slightly more than half that of Pennsylvania, but it includes less than an eleventh of the vast state of Texas. It produces almost all the commercial timber output of the state which amounts to one and a half billion board feet annually, and gives Texas sixth or seventh rank among the states in lumber production. Farms in the district produce an average of 440,000 bales of cotton annually which is more than the total for Tennessee and Virginia and forms a tenth of the cotton crop of Texas. Corn is the chief supply crop of the farmer, and legumes and vegetables are produced for home consumption and marketing. Livestock industries have not attained large importance in the region. This pine forest belt contains two geographic regions-a southern one in which exploitation of forest resources is the dominant economic activity, and a northern one in which agriculture is of outstanding importance.

TOTAL LUXATION OF THE SPINE.

The abstract of Steinmann's article on Total Luxation of the Spine, inThe Journal, June 16, 1906, prompts the following report: Oct. 19, 1898, I was called to see a negro. October 17 he had attempted to rearrange some bales of cotton loaded on a wagon. In lifting them he placed his head under the bales and lifted with his head and hands. In some way a bale fell on him and crushed him to the earth, whence he was picked up and attended by an irregular practitioner. I found him suffering from a complete bilateral dislocation of the fifth cervical vertebra forward with complete paralysis of all of his limbs and bladder. He could move neither hands nor feet and could not control his urine. His bowels had not moved since the injury. I immediately attempted reduction, without anesthesia, which was accomplished very easily. All the symptoms gradually improved.