costly to raise. The actual cost of growing it is from twentythree and one-half to twenty-six cents per pound of lint. It is a shy bearer. The average yield is about 100 pounds of lint per acre. It takes from 31⁄2 to 44 pounds of seed to yield one pound of lint. It requires a long season free from frost until the middle of December to reach its maximum perfection and maturity. It is geographically limited in its home. It requires a moist climate and clay subsoil. A hundred years of time covering experiments have failed to grow it outside of the limits described in this article. It will degenerate in three years into a coarse, short and brittle staple unless improved by new seed or improved selection. It requires long training of the laborer to cultivate it successfully. It is hard to pick. The upland gatherer will not pick it. It costs from $1.25 to $1.50 per hundred pounds to pick it from the bolls. A normal crop for the area in which it is grown is from 90,000 to 110,000 bales. Nine tenths of which is grown in Georgia and Florida. In the limited area in which it is grown 500,000 bales can be produced if the world's consumption would enwarrant it at a fair profit to the grower. At the present high prices and scarcity of labor and prevailing prices for the staple it is not profitable to the grower. It takes the educated brains of the white man to grow it successfully and the cheaper labor of the black man cannot be used as profitably in growing it as can be on the upland or short staple cotton. The Sea Island Cotton's fine manufactured products easily rank it as Queen of the fibre family with exclusive and aristocratic subjects chosen from the Anglo Saxon race on whose educated brain, skill and energy depends the maintainance of her production and supremacy. The increase or decrease of the industry depends in a large measure on a fair profit to the producer and a closer aliance of the grower and manufacturer. We must know what grades and qualities of cotton you can assure us you can use profitably to us and your own interest. In behalf of the Sea Island Cotton Association, I ask your co-operation with the growers and will cheerfully reciprocate in behalf of the Association in any and all efforts from the manufacturers either in America or the Old World. The SECRETARY. I will say in this connection that persons wishing to read other articles on the subject of Sea Island Cotton will find them in papers on Sea Island Cotton, Transactions, Vol. 59, (Atlanta Meeting,) page 244, and Vol. 69, page 200, by ELIAS L. RIVERS, James Island, S. C., which were read at those meetings. Certain bales of East Florida Sea Island Cotton have been collected to be the basis of photographs to illustrate this paper, but the author wrote that they had been gnawed by rats so that they were not suitable subjects. The PRESIDENT. Is there any business to come before the meeting? If not we will now adjourn until ten o'clock to-morrow morning, except, of course, for the banquet this evening, which I hope as many as possible will attend. [Adjourned to Friday morning, April 17, at 10 o'clock.] NOTE. Thanks are due to Hon. J. SWINTON WALEY, of Edisto Island, a scien tific seed expert, for historical data in this article. THIRD ANNUAL BANQUET. HOTEL BRUNSWICK, THURSDAY EVENING, APRIL 16, 1908. The annual banquet was held on Thursday evening, April 16, at Hotel Brunswick. The company gathered in the parlors at 6 P. M., and after an informal reception took their seats at the tables in the banquet hall. |