Date of Planting.—The date of planting ;varies according to latitude and local lions. There are a group of some thirty-odd 'townies in south Texas bordering the Gulf, be tween the eastern and western limits of the State, and a. few other counties in the extreme southern section of the Gulf States, that begin planting as early as 1 March, and continue until the middle of the month. The tier of counties lying just above these, averaging• about five from south to north, and stretching across the hell from the Atlantic Ocean almost to the Rio Grande River, begin planting about 15 March and continue until 1 April, In the neat tier of counties, covering the middle section and, ex, tending from the Atlantic to the western limit of the Texas cotton fields, the average date of planting is from 1 April to 15 April. The moat northern tier of counties, extending from the Atlantic to the Pan Handle in Texas, begin planting about 15 April and sometimes continue until the middle of Chopping Out— With favorable weather the seed ought to germinate within a week. As soon as the plants have formed three or four leaves and have attained a few inches in height, they should be thinned or chopped out to stand. This is done with the hoe, the distance left between the plants depending on the char* acter of the soil and the usual size of the plants when full grown. On the fertile lands. of Misr sissippi, Louisiana and. Texas, where the plants grow 6 or 8 feet• high, as much as 2 and some times 3 feet are left between .the plants. On the poorest lands the distance is usually 8. to 12 inches, and on good soils 12 to 15 inches. Chopping to a stand is usually done in May, i unless the season is late. If the season s no, favorable and the seed have come up so regularly as to necessitate replanting, the chopping out tb a stand may go on until the middle of June and even later. After the thinning out process a turning or shovel plow is used to bar off the soil from each side of the bed and kill the young grass. A sweep is then run through the alley or trench between the beds throwing the soil back upon the bed and close up to the plants. Following this at •dif ferent intervals the crop should have. at lean three hoeings and three to four plowings. The soil must be continually and industriously dis turbed, not only to keep down grass and weeds, but to conserve moisture. This cultivation should be kept up until the crop is finally ((laid by,)) which is usually during the first half of July if the season is favorable. The different stages of cultivation may be summarized as follows: Breaking up and plowing in January, February and March; planting the seed in April; chopping out in May; cultivating with plow and hoe in June; laying by the in July and August; picking in September, Ocr tober, November and December. During the process of cultivation the plant has developed stalk and limb, squares have appeared, de veloped into blossoms and the young fruit or bolls have formed.
Blooms and Bolls.—The first blooms ap pear about 15 May in southwest Texas, 20 May in central Texas, Louisiana and southwest fieorgia; 1 June in the Mississippi bottoms, south Arkansas and middle Georgia; 10 June, in the pine hills of South Carolina, middle Alabama and central Georgia; 20 June, in northwest Louisiana, middle Arkansas, north west Georgia and southern North Carolina; 4 July, in • north Arkansas and north Texas; 10 July in northeast North Carolina; 25 July in western Tennessee and Oklahoma. The first bolls open about 15 May in south Texas; 25 June in middle Texas; 1 July in south Louisi ana; 10-15 July in central Louisiana, south Georgia, the pine hills of South Carolina; 1 August northwest Louisiana, south Arkansas, coast of North Carolina; 1 September, Pied mont region, North Carolina, Texas prairies; 15 September, north Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Picking.— The ingenuity of man has not yet overcome the difficulties of picking cotton by machinery. In recent years a number of machines for this purpose have been invented and tested, but so far none has proved success ful. If the plants were of more uniform height, and if the fruit ripened all at once, success might be attained. But the plant varies in height from 21/2 or 3 feet to 8 or 10 feet, and the fruit ripens continuously from August to mid-winter. Even when the fields are ready for the first picking the plants are filled with young tender bolls of all stages of growth that are likely to be irreparably damaged by a machine. So that hand picking goes on as in centuries past, and there is not yet. in sight the promise of relief from the most tedious and expensive process connected with cotton culture. Picking, unless the crop is unusually late, begins in south Texas and the southermost counties of Georgia and the Gulf States in July and August, and at later dates in the three other divisions corresponding in variation to the dates of planting assigned to each, as given elsewhere. Before the season is over the fields are picked over three or four times, and even oftener. However, they should be kept clean of open cotton to avoid unfavorable weather and loss by wind storms blowing the cotton to the ground. The hands, men, women and children—and often every available one in the community is employed — go into the field as soon as the dew is off of the plant, each taking a row of cotton and picking the lint from the bolls until the sack strapped across the shoulder is filled. The cotton is emptied into large baskets and the baskets when filled are weighed and each hand credited with the day's picking. The cotton is then hauled in wagons to the bins or to the plantation gin house. Many small farmers and tenants never store the seed cotton but haul it to the Vublic gins where it is weighed and sold to the ginner, the price paid being about one-third of that paid for the lint after it is ginned. The price paid for picking is by the 100 pounds, and varies from time to time and in different sec tions, being governed by the supply of labor and the market price of cotton. In Georgia 50 to 60 cents may be the ruling price while in Texas during the same season it may be $1 or more. Expert hands pick from 250 to 300 pounds a day, but the average for the witole country will hardly exceed 125 pounds per hand. There is a record of a 16-year-old Texas girl picking 603 pounds in one day, and of two Oklahoma boys averaging 1,100 pounds a day. The records of the United States Depart ment of Agriculture, in an investigation of the comparative efficency of white and negro labor in the cotton fields, show that in 152 counties, with a negro population amounting to 75 per cent of the whole, the average pick ing per day was III pounds, whereas in 192 counties with a white population constituting 75 per cent of the whole, the average was 148 pounds. Higher prices are paid in Texas and Oklahoma for picking than elsewhere, due to the greater scarcity of labor. In recent years the ruling price for the whole cotton belt has been from 60 to 70 cents per hundred, but in 1917 the average was about $1.00 per hundred, due to the increased cost of labor. As indi cating the vast sum expended for this item it cost the farmers of the South approximately $162,100,000 to pick the record crop of 1914.