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Abstract
Excerpts: For more than a century, cotton has been the South's dominant agricultural commodity. It has been the principal crop on 1,200,000 Southern farms, returning to farmers in 1947, a billion and a half dollars from the lint and an additional quarter of a billion dollars from the seed. This single crop was the source of more than half of the South's cash farm income in 1929, and one-third of the total in 1947. Except during the last three years when it has been outranked by wheat, cotton has been the most important cash crop of the entire United States. This important farm industry today is in a very real fight for its existence. Cotton always has had plenty of competitors for consumers' markets, but in the past it has more than held its own. During the last few years, however, two competitors—synthetic fibers and paper—have been making particularly successful attacks upon cotton's end-use markets. The full effect of this competition has not been felt, thus far, because of the huge unprecedented demand, as a result of the war, for all sorts of textiles. But now that we are returning to a buyers' market, the story may be different.