COMMODITIES: Much Ado in Memphis

Rheumatic old King Cotton let out a loud roar. Partly a roar of defiance, partly a roar of pain, it rose up out of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, where the National Cotton Council was assembled in annual meeting.

Leaders of the South’s long-ailing major industry, habitually dependent for protection on Southern oratory in the halls of Congress, announced that hereafter they would fight their own fights—to a certain extent.

Cried Mississippi Planter Oscar Johnson, the Council’s owlish president: “Cotton can defeat any competitor on today’s horizon if it is given equality with that competitor in scientific support, sales pressure and production efficiency.” Johnson called upon the raw cotton industry to contribute money and manpower for the attack. It was hinted that as much as $25,000,000 might be spent annually on research alone.

Publisher George A. Sloan of the Southern Agriculturalist chimed in with “We have depended too much on outside help and not enough on our own resources. . . . Politics in a free domestic economy is a poor substitute for scientific research and sound merchandising.”

Along with symptoms of new vigor, old King Cotton also exhibited symptoms of chronic weaknesses. So the Department of Agriculture diagnosed last week.

Although cotton is still the world’s most important fiber, American cotton “no longer can take its markets for granted.” Reason: in the last ten years, the price of U.S. cotton has been artificially boosted by the cotton bloc from 12¢ a pound to 23¢. The gap between the U.S. price and the world price has widened until now American cotton costs 6¢ more a pound. Result: foreign consumption of U.S. cotton has been cut in half. Moreover, rayon has moved into what’s left of the market.

Rayon prices have dropped from 63¢ a pound in 1928 to 26¢. In 1920, the U.S. produced rayon fibers equivalent to roughly 23,000 bales of cotton; 1944 production was equivalent to 1,700,000 bales. Average U.S. cotton crop: around 12,000,000 bales.

Concluded the Department of Agriculture forebodingly: “There are some farm products for which minimum-price guarantees, within reasonable limits, might not reduce marketings by any serious amount. But cotton is not one of them.”