Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

To the Members of the Farmers’ Un ion Throughout the Cotton Belt: Just after the annual convention Little Rock had named 15 cents a pound as the minimum price which the Southern farmer should receive for his cotton during the ensuing year, the speculators in the cotton . ranks have managed to depress the market and to beat down the price. I address to you this line as a fra ternal appeal to hold steadfast to the counsel of your annual convention, and with heroic fidelity to abide its ultimatum to the markets of the world. Hold your cotton for 15 cents, and hold it until it brings the price. The committee which fixed the min imum at Little Rock represents all the cotton States, and many of the best farmers of the South. The National Union, when it fixed that minimum, knew more about the situation than any cotton gambler or combination of cotton gamblers. It was not fixed upon an impulse or an uncertainty, but after deliberate study and investigation. With all my heart and with all my mind, I urge you to the last limit of your ability to hold steadfast to this policy adopted by your National Un ion. The present status makes a definite and decisive crisis in the history of our great organization. Up to this date the farmer has worked with unbroken harmony, and has kept the faith of his councils in the face of opposition and against the possibility of defeat. Points Way to Victory. We have won victor}’ after victory by this splendid policy. We stand now face to face with a condition which affords us an opportunity to show the world that the Southern farmer is resolutely determined to maintain his rights. The eyes of the world are upon him as never before, and the history of the organization in the future will depend in no small degree upon the courage and fidel ity with which he meets the present situation. For three years you have won out in every proposition that you have presented to the business world. Win once more in this important is sue and it will be henceforth easier sailing for us all. Loyalty at this time will do more to attract the thou sands who are outside the ranks than any argument we can present, or any appeal that we can make. Let us win this victory and we will achieve the fear of our enemies and the re spect, confidence and admiration of the world. ' The act of the last national con • vention pulsed the whole union with fresh and virile hope. Perfect har mony and perfect unity prevailed in all our councils, and the Farmers’ Union stands to-day as a solid phal anx before the forces of greed. Cotton is Key to Situation. You hold the key to the situation. You have the cotton, you have the warehouses, and if to those you only add the courage, the business stamina and the common sense to hold your own, you need not fear the future. Do not be scared by the conspiracy which has been begun to make you part with your cotton for less than the minimum price. You have behind you the greatest power of the age in which we live, the power of num bers and the power of organization. Only realize your strength, only be faithful to your principle, only stand with the shoulder to shoulder touch with your comrades, and the victory will more than atone for the incon venience and the waiting. I do not ask you to hold your cot ton to the injury of your creditors. Every farmer’s duty is to pay his debts, but this is a period when the individual farmer and the Farmers’ Union can use their influence with their merchant friends to induce them to bear for a little while with anv farming debtor whom the local union may recommend to their confidence and regard. Be Loyal to the Union. In this emergency every farmer is an evangel. Let him go out among his fellows to cheer them up—to stiff en their backbones —to show them the way to the union warehouses and to the friendly merchant and to the loy al way of waiting. The year that is before us simply waits to crown the farmer who in this period is loyal to his union, faithful to its messages and resolute in maintaining the standard which it has fixed for the price of his noblest product. I feel that rarely before has the in tegrity and strength of the Farmers’ Union faced a greater crisis than in the courage and character with which he meets this assault of the conspira tors to force surrender upon the mini mum price -which it has declared. Let every farmer face the situation without fear, and as God has pros pered him in other years, and as his union has prepared for him in the storehouse for his crop, let him put his shoulder to the shoulder of his brother and breathing courage, con fidence and determination, let him re peat to the world the statement that the man who buys his cotton must pay him 15 cents a pound! C. S. BARRETT, President Farmers’ Union. FARMERS IN FORTIFIED POSI TION. Newspapers in the Southwest, in the very heart of the heavy cotton producing section, are deprecating the demand for 15 cent cotton, on the ground that there is no hope of get ting growers to hold for that price. That is quite true, but that is not the point for discussion or agitation at this time. It is a fact that fifteen days ago spot middling cotton was worth in Southern markets about 13 1-4 cents. It is worth just as much to the spin ners to-day as it was then, yet the price being paid is between $6 and $7 less a bale. Now, if it is imprac ticable to get producers to hold for 15 cents, itr should not be impossible to get them to stand out for 13 cents —which they were getting just the other day—when spinners are able and willing to pay 13 cents. The slump in price is based on purely fic titious grounds. There is demand for the raw cotton; there is demand for its product at prices that enable spinners to pay 13 cents and to make good profit. Some fanners may be willing to sell for 12 cents, but the South Carolina producers will be about six million dollars better off if they get 13 cents. The difference will mean about $17,000,000 to Texas. WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. If the farmer who owes the money on which his crop was made, is to keep his cotton off the market, the merchants and the bankers will have to help him, and that help will have to be extended all the way from North Carolina to Texas. It is the small farmers whose cotton is now going to .swell the daily receipts. If they were able to keep their product off the market for twenty days the price— depressed by speculation, not by spin ners—would bound back above 13 cents, and there it could be held. But unity of action is necessary, and active co-operation and instruc tion by every newspaper in the cot ton belt, daily and weekly. The growers of South Carolina and Geor gia should get accurate information every day about the sentiment of the growers in Louisiana, Texas and Ok lahoma, and vice versa. Every farmer that reads a news paper that gives the news knows there is no chance of the crop this year coming within the over-production class. They know that thirteen and three-quarter million bales will be used, if produced, and that there is sale for the manufactured products at good prices. So the farmers of the country are safe in resisting this movement to depress the price of cot ton. A cotton grower said the other day that the farmers would never stand together until they got another dose of 5-cent cotton. That is not necessaiy. But they do need two things: First, that those in debt shall not be forced to sell at this time of the year—the warehouses can help them there; and, second, confidence in the soundness, safety and intelligence of their advisers and leader’s. This week every newspaper throughout the South should urge farmers not to sell a pound of cotton for less than 13 cents, and should make clear their reasons for that be lief.—The State. DECLINED TO HOLD COTTON. The rate at which cotton has been marketed and moved to tide water during the past few weeks is a cir cumstance to arouse reflection. Ere the cotton season opened the Farm ers’ Union had served notice on the public that the chain of storage ware houses built west of the Mississippi river would hold 1,000,000, or even 1,500,000 bales, and with this was coupled the announcement that the Union, having effected adequate ar rangements for advances on cotton, purposed the accumulation of cotton in these warehouses and holding for a minimum of fifteen cents per pound. Then the Texas Farmers’ Union of Texas met at Fort Worth, on August 5, and ratified the “stand pat for 15 cent” policy. On September 3 the National Farmers’ Union took a like step at Little Rock. Those declarations and movements impressed spinners and cotton buyers. There is no doubt about that, and with the prospect of strongly organ ized and capable movement to hold cotton for 15 cents the season opened with conditions that put many buyers on the anxious seat. Would the Farmers’ Union be able to carry out its purposed That was the auestion that spinners and factors on both sides of the Atlantic were asking. It is not surprising that cotton opened active and prices went up, especially in view of the admitted shortage in Texas. But the cotton buyers are the shrewdest men in the world—when it comes to cotton. They were the first to discover that there were weak places in the walls of the Fanners’ Union fortress; that there was a de cided disposition to disregard the 15 cent ultimatum and take what cotton would bring. The buyers—we mean, of course, the leading spirits of that element—discovered the truth even before the cotton growers themselves did. There were several causes op erating to lower the price of cotton, but one of the most forceful of the reasons was that the buyers were sat isfied that while some growers would be loyal to the Farmers’ Union pol icy and hold for 15 cents, the ma jority ivould not do so, and subse quent developments have shown that the conclusion was correct. As a rule farmers have not held, nor are they doing so. If able to get cotton at 12 or even 13 cents, why should a buyer pay 15 or even 14 cents? He will not do so until some other influence oi force than the storage warehouses and 15 cent ultimatum of the Farm ers’ Union operate to compel him. We are considering this, not in any spirit of satisfaction at the failure of the warehouse system, as a means to forcing the price of cotton upward, for we are glad to see the farmers get the fairest return on their labor, but as a development of the situation. The warehouses are patronized, we suppose, by farmers, but it must be evident to the most casual observer that the warehouses are not filling up with cotton to be held for fifteen cents. Tn a word, the plan—if that was the plan—to use the warehouses as a means to the end, appears to have failed, and farmers are selling cotton right along at current prices. The movement was watched with keenest interest, for there was gen eral doubt if farmers could be in duced to join in a great movement of practical co-operation, as was pro posed. If the farmer had had the nerve to back up the Union project and hold cotton the price might have been forced to fifteen cents by this time. But he didn’t “stand pat,” and in his failure to do so just what the cotton buyers expected has happened. —The Tribune. SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS. The great development of the cot ton milling industry in the South within the last two decades is one of the most notable evidences of South ern progress. In 1890 there were 336 mills in the South consuming raw cot ton, and at the close of the commercial year just ended there were 814 cot ton mills in operation, with new mills still in course of construction. In 1890 the takings of the then existing South ern mills amounted to 546,894 bales of cotton, "while for the commercial year just closed the takings of cot ton mills in the South reached 2,439,- 108 bales. Tn 1890 Northern cotton mill sconsumed 1,799.258 bales, and in the last year 2,526,390. or only about 87,000 bales more than were used by the Southern mills.—Nashville Barb nor. PAGE SEVEN