The Laurens Advertiser

MANY WAREHOUSES
ARE BEING BUILT
State Warehouse Commissioner Estimates Thirty Warehouses be Added to System.

Columbia, July 6, W. G. Smith, state warehouse commissioner, who has been urging farmers to build warehouses this summer, said yesterday that from indications to date he thought thirty additional warehouses would be put into the state system this summer. The state cotton warehouse system closed the 1918-1919 season with 276 licensed warehouses in South Carolina.

These warehouses could not hold all of the cotton which farmers wanted to store in the state system from the 1918 crop. In an effort to prevent this from happening in 1919-1920, Commissioner Smith has been conducting a campaign to induce farmers to build plantation or community warehouses this summer and put them into the state warehouse system.

Mr. Smith said yesterday that he wanted to see the capacity of the cotton warehouses in the state system increased by 500,000 before the next cotton season opened, and the preferable way to get this increased capacity was for farmers to build this summer plantation or community warehouses cutting down the cost of building by using their farm hands on the construction work during wet weather when work in the fields is impossible.

J. S. Wannamaker, of St. Matthews, president of the American Cotton Association, has estimated that "country damage" caused a loss of 6.3 per cent. on the cotton crop of 1918. On this basis, the farmers of South Carolina lost on their 1918 crop of 1,500,000 bales the staggering sum of $11,175,000 account damage to bales of cotton left in the weather.

On Mr. Wannamaker's estimate, the loss per bale for "country damage" amounted on the average to 31.5 pounds worth $9.45 to 30 cents. The average cost of warehousing and insuring a bale of cotton against fire for six months in the state warehouse system is less than half this average loss per bale on the entire 1918 crop caused by "country damage".

However, the average "country damage" loss per bale on the 1918 crop is not a fair index to the actual loss on individual lots of weather damaged cotton as is shown by the following instances which have lately come to the attention of Commissioner Smith.

A farmer recently sold 16 bales of cotton which were left in the weather after ginning. The rotten, weather-damaged cotton in this lot amounted to 2,300 pounds or over four bales. The loss in money amounted to $690 at 30 cents a pound. This farmer could have warehoused his 16 bales in almost any warehouse in the state system, had there been room for it, for six years for $600 and at the same time it would have been insured against fire.

A second farmer disposed of 60 bales of cotton a week or so ago on which the "country damage" amounted to 7,500 pounds, a loss at 30 cents a pound of $2,250. It might have put his bales in a state warehouse, thus protecting it from the weather and against fire. Kept it there for the six months it lay rotting in his yard and have at least $1,500 of the $2,250 he lost.

Mr. Smith pointed out yesterday that with the removal of all government restrictions on construction there was no reason now why farmers or groups of farmers could not build either plantation or community warehouses and put them into the State warehouse system, thereby avoiding "country damage" on the 1919 crop.