Word: cottoned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...states that make up the U.S. cotton belt, the unmistakable racket of mechanical cotton pickers filled the air last week. It was harvest time for the crop that reigned supreme in the South for a century. But even though modern machines have largely displaced the tattered ranks of Negro field hands, the resulting rise in productivity cannot conceal the fact that King Cotton is in deep trouble...
...king's men-the 300,000 U.S. cotton farmers-will harvest little more than 11 million bales this year, compared with 18 million in 1955, when the U.S. produced half the world's supply. That proportion is now down to a fifth-and the U.S. cotton industry is under assault from growers in Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey. Last year the U.S. exported only 2.7 million bales of cotton, compared with 4.2 million...
Even more of a threat is posed by the rapid advances of synthetics, which last year outsold cotton 2 to 1. The cotton industry is fighting back, but its $13 million research and advertising campaign amounts at best to a rearguard action. Research is concentrated on quick development of permanent-press fabrics made entirely of cotton. Ordinarily, such fabrics must be strengthened with synthetics, since the chemicals used to impart a permanent press weaken cotton fibers. The first limited success was an all-cotton durable-press shirt marketed this year...
Such small gains are not nearly enough to reverse cotton's decline, which has all but wiped out the once bustling exchanges of the South. The exchange in New Orleans, from which clipper ships braved Northern blockades during the Civil War, closed in 1964 and is now a dusty, rotting building. The Galveston and Charleston exchanges shut down last year. Next to go, most likely, will be Houston's, which sold only 100,000 bales in 1968. There is little left for its score of traders to speculate upon -except the question of how long the exchange will...
Ironically, both synthetics makers and foreign growers were given access to cotton's domain as an unforeseen result of U.S. Government policy. The troubles began with rigid, Depression-born price supports, which eventually reached a peak of 32½? a pound in 1955. They were aimed at propping the growers' income, but in the process they raised the price of U.S. cotton above the going world rate. The Government's solution to that problem was to subsidize exports, beginning in 1956. That move, in turn, created a crisis for domestic mill ers, who complained that they...