The Beaver Herald

EUROPEAN WAR SHATTERS KING COTTON'S THRONE
FLEECY STAPLE MUST PAY RANSOM INTO THE COFFERS OF WAR.
Nation Rings With Cries of Stricken Industry.
By Peter Radford
Lecturer National Farmers' Union.

King Cotton has suffered more from the European war than any other agricultural product on the American continent. The shells of the belligerents have bursted over his throne frightening his subjects and shattering his markets, and, panic-stricken the nation cries out "God save the king!"

People from every walk of life have contributed their mite toward rescue work.
Society has danced before the king;
milady has decreed that the
family wardrobe shall contain only
cotton goods; the press has pleaded
with the public to "buy a bale";
bankers have been formulating holding plans;
congress and legislative
bodies have deliberated over relief
measures;
statesmen and writers
have grown eloquent expounding the
inalienable rights of "His Majesty"
and presenting schemes for preserving the financial integrity of the
stricken staple, but the sword of Europe has proved mightier than the pen
of America in fixing value upon this
product of the sunny south. Prices
have been bayoneted, values riddled
and markets decimated by the battling
hosts of the eastern hemisphere until
the American farmer has suffered a
war loss of $400,000,000, and a bale
of cotton brave enough to enter a
European port must pay a ransom of
half its value or go to prison until the
war is over.

Hope of the Future Lies In Co-operation.
The Farmers' Union, through the
columns of the press, wants to thank
the American people for the friendship, sympathy and assistance given
the cotton farmers in the hour of distress and to direct attention to co-
operative methods necessary to permanently assist the marketing of all
farm products.

The present emergency presents as
grave a situation as ever confronted
the American farmer and from the
viewpoint of the producer, would seem
to justify extraordinary relief measures, even to the point of bending the
constitution and straining business
rules in order to lift a portion of the
burden off the backs of the farmer,
for unless something is done to check
the invasion of the war forces upon
the cotton fields, the pathway of the
European pestilence on this continent
will be strewn with mortgaged homes
and famine and poverty will stalk over
the southland, filling the highways of
industry with refugees and the bankruptcy court with prisoners.

All calamities teach us lessons and
the present crisis serves to illuminate
the frailties of our marketing methods and the weakness of our credit
system, and out of the financial anguish and travail of the cotton farmer
will come a volume of discussion and
a mass of suggestions and finally a
solution of this, the biggest problem
in the economic life of America, if,
indeed, we have not already laid the
foundation for at least temporary relief.

More Pharaohs Needed In Agriculture.
Farm products have no credit and
perhaps can never have on a permanent and satisfactory basis unless we
build warehouses, cold storage plants,
elevators, etc., for without storage and
credit facilities, the south is compelled to dump its crop on the market
at harvest time. The Farmers' Unions
in the cotton producing states have
for the past ten years persistently advocated the construction of storage
facilities. We have built during this
period 2,000 warehouses with a capacity of approximately 4,000,000 bales
and looking backward the results
would seem encouraging, but looking
forward, we are able to house less
than one-third of the crop and warehouses without a credit system lose
90 percent of their usefulness.

The problem is a gigantic one—too great
for the farmer to solve unaided. He
must have the assistance of the banker, the merchant and the government.
In production we have reached the
high water mark of perfection in the
world's history, but our marketing
methods are most primitive. In the
dawn of history we find agriculture
plowing with a forked stick but with
a system of warehouses under governmental supervision that made the
Egyptians the marvel of civilization
for who has not admired the vision of
Joseph and applauded the wisdom of
Pharaoh for storing the surplus until
demanded by the consumer, but in
this age we have too many Josephs
who dream and not enough Pharaohs
who build.