Texas Almanac, 1952-1953 Page: 189

                                
COTTON CROP.

South Texas Development.
At the same time that the cotton farmer
was migrating from   the area of Austin's
colony north and northwest to the Blacklands
he was pushing west onto the more cultivable
lands of the Coastal Plains southeast of San
Antonio. But it was not until the early 1920's
that the Coastal Bend country in the vicinity
of Corpus Christi came into its own as a
cotton-producing region. About the same time
the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which was in
the early stages of development of its citrus
and winter vegetable industries, turned to
cotton and began producing on a big scale.
Cotton Crop Distribution.
During the last few years cotton has been
grown on commercial scale in about 235 of the
254 counties of Texas. Despite this wide dis-
tribution, most of the production comes from
a few relatively small areas, including the
Middle Coastal Plains, Middle and North East
Texas, the Blacklands, the Secondary Black-
lands, Middle West Texas, the Staked Plains,
the Coastal Bend, the Lower Rio Grande
Valley and the isolated Upper Valley of the
Rio Grande.
In the record-breaking crop year of 1949,
when 5,842,041 running bales were produced.
there were fourteen counties that grew more
than 100,000 bales each. Regions, and counties
in which they were located, were as follows:
Great Plains.-Lubbock, 261,492; Hockley.
202.088; Lamb. 192,195; Dawson, 175,507;
Lynn. 185,512: Hale, 118,285. and Crosby,
116.252.
Coastal  Bend. - San   Patricio,  104,609;
Nueces, 101,198.
Lower Rio Grande Valley.-Cameron, 218,-
972; Hidalgo, 190,906; Willacy, 119,486.
Blacklands.-Ellis, 117,160.
Upper Rio Grande Valley.-El Paso. 101,389.
These fourteen counties, plus Haskell, 96.-
348; Williamson, 89,434; Hall, 88.214; Jones,
86,718; Hill, 84,671; Martin. 83,199; Terry.
80,793; Navarro, 78,869. and Collin. 71,822.
produced 2,965,119 bales, more than half of
the biggest crop in Texas' cotton-growing
history.
The upward tendency of cotton acreage
and production continued until 1926, when the
all-time record of 17.749,000 harvested acres
was reached with a production of 5,628,000
bales, the highest production in history, ex-
cept the year 1949, when the record crop of
5842,041 bales was produced from the rela-
tively small acreage of 10,900,000, because of
exceptionally high yield.
Acreage Control.
However. the average acreage remained
above 16,000,000 through 1930, after which the
effects of the economic depression and crop
control was inaugurated. (See table, p. 190.)
The big crop of 1949 brought a renewed
tightening of crop controls for the year 1950,
when a poor crop year, plus increased de-
mand because of threat of war, completely
reversed the cotton  market situation  and
caused the government to drop controls for
1951, greatly increasing the acreage.
Cotton Pests.
The unpredictable fluctuations of the cotton
crop have been caused, first, by the weather
and, second, by the cotton plant's suscepti-
bility to a number of pests. Most destructive
of these over the long period has been the
cotton boll weevil which entered Texas from
Mexico in 1901 and spread gradually eastward
across the entire cotton  belt, though the
higher and drier areas of West and North
Texas have never been greatly affected by
this pest. Dusting with calcium arsenate has
been adopted as the best means of control.
Early in the 1920's the pink boll worm
appeared in Texas cotton fields along the
Rio Grande, coming from Mexico. To combat
this pest legal restrictions have been set up
with the state divided into eight districts
with varying regulations. Treatment of the

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4

D)allas News l'holi.
Cotton-picking machine on farm of A. A.
Adams, who is operating machine, near
Ferris, Ellis County.
seed during ginning, and shipment of cotton
and seed under regulations are the means that
have been adopted to curb further spread of
the pink boll worm.
Other pests that damage the cotton crop
under certain weather conditions are flea
hoppers, grasshoppers, leaf worm, boll worm
and root rot or cotton blight. Root rot is a
fungus disease that attacks the roots of the
plant, a slow spreading infestation that is
difficult to eradicate. It is worst on olack-
lands and other limestone soils. Crop rotation,
with the planting of crops without tap roots,
is the best means of control.
Cotton Crop Mechanization.
Over the long period the greatest problem
of the cotton-growing industry has been cot-
ton's resistance to mechanization in an age
of mechanization. Expanded in the South as a
slave crop. there remained cheap labor for
cotton production after the freeing of the
slaves. This situation discouraged mechani-
zation, in addition to the difficulty of devising
a machine that would pick the lint from the
bolls.
Some progress in mechanization has been
made in recent years. During 1950, the Texas
Employment Commission reported that there
were 160 mechanical pickers owned by Texas
farmers, of which only 112 were operated,
because the short crop made the labor supply
more than usually plentiful.
The much simpler cotton stripper is widely
used, however, after the plants are defoliated

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