The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 94, July 1990 - April, 1991 Page: 39
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Pink Bollworm in Texas
loaned money to farmers, or "carried" them with ostensible reluctance
and at a high interest rate, and they demanded their money back in the
shortest possible time. Cotton farmers were expected to produce and
sell their crops and repay the loans within a year, while in the cattle
business it took two or more years before financial returns, if any, came
in.4 Another reason why Texans raised cotton was intimated by Clar-
ence Ousley, one-time assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Ag-
riculture, at a meeting on the pink bollworm in Washington, D.C.:
"The psychology of growing and selling cotton is almost a mania. I
have frequently said that I do not know whether cotton is a plant or a
mental disease."
About 3,000,000 of the approximately 4,000,000 people living in
Texas in the year 1917 lived in rural areas and knew firsthand about
the importance of cotton to their well-being. In 1917, during one of the
worst droughts in the state's history, Texans planted i1,092,00o acres
of cotton and produced 3,125,000 bales of lint and 1,390,000 tons of
cottonseed at a total value of $495,590,000, or more than half the total
value of $790,923,o00 of all crops harvested in Texas that year, the first
year the United States was directly involved in World War I. Texas's
cotton acreage and production represented about a third of the
33,841,00o acres of cotton planted and 11,302,00o bales produced in
all of the fifteen major cotton-producing states in 1917. The number of
cotton mills in Texas peaked at 233, and the number of cotton gins
reached a record high of 4,694 between 191o and 1920. Those mills
and gins and other cotton-related industries represented thousands of
jobs, and, combined with other cotton-growing vocations, gave Texas
an economy that was bound to, and by, cotton."
The boll weevil was the first major pest to threaten that economy. In
1896 fear of the boll weevil caused the Texas legislature to provide for
the appointment of the state's first entomologist and to appropriate
limited funds to research ways to fight the pest. W. D. Hunter, member
Lewis H Haney, "Farm Credit Conditions in a Cotton State," Amerrcan Economzc Revrew, IV
(Mar., 1914).
5"Conference with Secretary Meredith Regarding Action to be Taken to Meet the Emer-
gency caused by the Pink Bollworm Infestations m 'lexas and Louisiana," statement made April
7, 192o, at meeting of Federal Hortaultural Board, Washington, D.C., reproduced in "Pro-
ceedings of the Pink Boll Worm Investigation Before the Joint Committee of the Senate and
House, Held in the Capitol at Austin, Texas," May 24-May 31, 1920, Records of the Legis-
lature, RG 1oo (TSL), 719
SInformation and figures on cotton production, gins, and mills from Texas Almanac and State
Industrial Guzde, 1970-1971 (Dallas: A. H. Belo Corp., 1969), 165, 386-387, and Yearbook of the
United States Department of Agrculture, 1918 (Washington, D C.: (;overnment Printing Office,
1919), 532; U.S. Dept of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1920 (Washington, D C.: Government Printing
Office, 1921), 643.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 94, July 1990 - April, 1991, periodical, 1991; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101214/m1/63/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.