Dollar Cotton

As I mentioned in an earlier story the farmers in the Mississippi Delta wouldn’t contract their cotton at 85 to 90 cents per pound in the spring of 1920. The unwavering expectations were that cotton would go to a dollar a pound in the fall. Didn’t the very fact that buyers were offering up to 90 cents prove that cotton would go to at least a dollar? And who knew how much higher?

One day after lay-by time (that’s when the cotton has had its last ploughing for the year) my dad, Charley Watson, was talking with a neighbor. He asked the neighbor if it was true that he had contracted a quantity of cotton at 85 cents a pound. The neighbor answered ‘yes’ it was true. Dad asked him if he minded telling him why was it when no other farmers deemed it wise to contract cotton at a fixed, possibly very low, price that he had thought it the thing to do. Dad had a way of asking such questions without offending. The man told him that he owed $10,000.00 on the piece of land on which he lived. He had sat down and figured out how many pounds at 85 cents would be required to pay off the land. Any amount that he should produce over the $10,000.00 worth, he would speculate on getting an amount more than the 85 cents. It was a fairly sure scheme to get the place paid off.

That fall the neighbor sold $10,000.00 worth of cotton under contract at 85 cents per pound and paid off his piece of land! The cotton not under contract, on which he speculated, he sold at 10 cents per pound as did his neighbors.

This was written by Roy C. Watson on July 17, 1986 at Jackson, Mississippi.