Word: cottons
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...happened that the cotton mills had an excellent excuse for slackening their pace-a shortage of cotton. It was a purely man-made shortage, for the U. S. Government holds under loan 11,400,000 bales, enough to keep the U. S. in shirts and skirts, sheets and towels, for nearly two years...
Nevertheless, the price of spot cotton last week was up to 9½?, highest level in nearly two years, and 1½? above the price of cotton for delivery after the new crop starts to move in August. The shortage has become so serious that the British spinners in Lancashire protested bitterly last March and the New York Cotton Exchange last week formally recognized the squeeze...
Paradoxical though the shortage is, it is precisely what the Government's cotton policy was supposed to accomplish. On the 1937-38 tremendous crop of 19,000,000 bales the Government offered to lend farmers 9? per Ib. The market prices went as low as 8?, with the result that the Government's cotton holding jumped to 11,400,000 bales. Secretary of Agriculture Wallace would like to sell some of his cotton now, but the Southern Senators, riding a rising market for their constituents, will presumably see to it that no Government lint is released so long...
...Senators' shortage may benefit their constituents and provide the mill operators with an excuse to work off inventory but it is no great contribution to the permanent solution of the U. S. cotton problem. That problem is basically the loss of foreign markets, for the U. S. used to export two-thirds of its annual crop, now exports only one-third. Alabama's Bankhead (Tallulah's uncle) has an answer in the form of export subsidies but the Senate last week turned it down, largely because the subsidies would directly benefit...
...Cotton is like a sinking ship. When a ship at sea is sinking, you do not wait to work out navigation problems and try to devise a long-range program. You just shout, 'Man the lifeboats!' Now we are trying to man the lifeboats for cotton...