Americus Times Recorder

What One More Dusting Would Have Meant
for Georgia
Sumter farmers are breaking
ground and some planting cot-
ton today, either for the mar-
ket in the fall or the boll wee-
vil in the summer.
Every authority, local and
otherwise, is satisfied that poi-
soning, is necessary and is eco-
nomically a good investment.
To attempt to produce cotton
now without poisoning is fool-
ish.
Dr. Andrew M. Soule. presi-
dent of the State College of
Agriculture, made the state-
ment in an address recently de-
livered at Albany that if the
farmers of Georgia had given
their cotton fields one more
dusting with calcium arsenate
last summer, they would have
made 300,000 more bales of
cotton than they, actually har-
vested.
That's an astounding state-
ment and but for the fact that
it comes from so high an au-
thority as is Dr. Soule, we
would be in doubt as to its ac-
curacy.
The Times-Recorder has no
desire to dictate to the farmer.
We know nothing more about
cotton farming than we are told
or read, but such statements as
the above are worth pondering
over,
Last summer, in Sumter coun-
ty, we had prospects for a
bumper crop, until the weather
man got cross and began send-
ing us rain-day in and day
out.
Our farmers became discour-
aged and many of them gave
up in despair, but just suppose
we have kept on fighting.
What a difference there might
have been.
This statement of Dr. Soule
is worth remembering. It may
rain again when another crop is
in the making. But, says the
Albany Herald:
The farmers should remem-
ber what, in the opinion of an
outstanding expert, one more
dusting of the eotton fields with
calcium arsenate last summer
would have meant to Georgia.
The battle will soon be on. May
the farmers win a glorious vic-
tory, not with calcium arsenate
alone, which is the infantry, but
with the food and forage crops
which must constitute the heavy-
artillery battalions of the anti-
weevil army.