DURING THE 1920S, invasion of the boll weevil forced Delta farmers to begin abandoning their well-accepted, but slow-maturing, long staple cotton varieties. Numerous buyer accounts were lost when the Delta could no longer supply desired staple lengths. Markets had to be found for intermediate and shorter staple lengths. In the 1923-24 season, Staplcotn received only 107,000 bales, its lowest number ever.

Garrard found ways to survive by keeping pace with, and often anticipating, change. In 1924, he shifted Staplcotn in a new direction from a straight pooling operation by adding a factor option. This provided for individual members' cotton to be shown on a crop-lot basis and offered separately, with offered prices to be reviewed with the grower before sale.

Premium cottons from farms continuing to produce long staples cost the grower more to produce and had to be fitted to market outlets where they were best suited. Discounts on the intermediate and short staple crops were sizable and could not equitably be combined into a uniform pooling arrangement.

The factor option resulted in some growers asking for bids at times when market conditions were particularly unsatisfactory. Because of this, a merchandising account was established and Staplcotn brought in cotton from factor accounts to provide more rapid liquidation. Purchases of such cotton were hedged on the New York futures market and merchandised throughout the season.

Apparently Garrard was doing something of significant benefit for the members and significant harm to area factors. During the 1924 season, a Memphis newspaper came out swinging. The News Scimitar claimed its city lost fifteen million dollars in 1924 through "the operations of various cotton growers' associations," and Memphis cotton men figured an additional million to the loss for the subsequent year, according to a series of articles beginning July 2, 1925.

Responding with a July 7 ad in The Commercial Appeal, rival newspaper to The News Scimitar, Staplcotn said the Association "has never diverted a bale of cotton either to or from any compress or warehouse in its territory - with but one exception. And that exception was in favor of Memphis. For the handling of the cotton grown by members which this Association at one time had in the Arkansas Delta, we maintained for two years an office in Memphis, and had this Arkansas cotton concentrated in that city, to the amount of 5,210 bales. This Association is still a member of the Memphis Cotton Exchange. Other than this exception, not even a suggestion has ever been made by this Association to its members as to where they should ship their cotton, so long as it goes to a bonded warehouse..."

The News Scimitar attack continued, saying "one Association in Mississippi pays its president $50,000 a year salary. It pays a vice president $15,000 a year". Staplcotn responded "There are two Associations in Mississippi, and the above statement is unqualifiedly false as to each of them."

The News Scimitars July 4 front page account of a lawsuit said "witnesses testified that Oscar F. Bledsoe, the president, received $50,000.00 per year as his salary, while other officers received proportionate amounts."

"No such testimony was given in the case in question," Staplcotn responded. "If it had been, the witness would have been liable to indictment for perjury. The salary of the president of this Association is less than one-fourth of $50,000.00. Instead of being $15,000.00 each, the salaries of the Vice-President and the Secretar-Treasurer combined are much less than that amount.

"The salaries paid by this Association seem terribly to oppress this self-appointed guardian of the Delta cotton growers, for it repeats the same stupid falsehood on July 5, still on its first page. If The News Scimitar had had the decency or fairness, or the courtesy common among businessmen, it could have ascertained the truth simply by asking a question. But the truth was the last thing this paper was seeking in planning its attack upon this Association," blistered the Staplcotn ad.

"The salaries paid by the Staple Cotton Cooperative Association to its President, Vice-President, General Manager, Assistant General Manager, Secretary Treasurer, and its District and Local Managers, all combined, do not cost the members of the Association one cent. Every dime of compensation paid these officers and employees comes out of two revenue accounts which accrue to the Association as the largest shipper of Delta staples in the world. The efficient handling of these two accounts by the management of this Association has made it possible for our members to receive the services of these officers and employees without levying one penny for their salaries upon a single bale of cotton shipped to the Association.

"These two accounts are loose and gain in weight and heretofore they have been the peculiar and exclusive perquisites of cotton buyers and warehouses, and no grower has been benefited by them, either directly or indirectly.

"...Salaries paid by this Association are based upon the degree, character and quality of service rendered. It is wholly erroneous to assume that these salaries were fixed at a time when cotton was abnormally high, and that, therefore, they should now be scaled down. On the contrary, cotton was then going begging at less than ten cents a pound. The average price of Association cotton during our first year was 25.96. The average price for the crop of 1924 was 28.74 - an increase of 2.78 cents per pound. But there has been no increase of salaries. On the contrary, there has been a definite decrease in the total amount of salaries paid, as between the highest point and the total paid for the past season. A still further decrease has been provided for," the Staplcotn ad continued.

The News Scimitar said July 3 "it costs seven or eight dollars a bale to sell cotton through these growers' associations."

Staplcotn responded "We are not answering for any other organization, but the Staple Cotton Cooperative Association, during the past four years, has handled $80,445,000.00 worth of cotton for its members, at a net operating cost of approximately one-and one-half per cent. It handled the crop of 1924 at a net cost of approximately 1.18 per cent. This would be less than $1.77 on a bale selling for $150.00. If the baleage were doubled these same two accounts, loose and gain in weight, would take care of the entire operating cost of the Association. The News Scimitar, either stupidly or willfully, adds such items as insurance, storage, interest on advances, which are incident to the handling of cotton under any and every system, the association's service cost in order to show a misleading total."

The News Scimitar, in its article of July 6, attacked Association members and Delta cotton growers in general as "a bunch of bootleggers and contract breakers." It charges them with having perpetrated "all manner of fraud and with being guilty of all sorts of nefarious practices, in order to defeat their contracts with their fellow growers." According to The News Scimitar, the Delta cotton grower is "as crooked as a counterfeiter and as vicious as a Chinese highbinder."

Staplcotn's ad responds, "If one-tenth of one per cent of these charges were true, this Association could not have successfully maintained its position for the past four years as the largest shipper of Delta Staples in America.

"The men who operate this Association are neither charlatans nor fools. They are serious-minded business men, who regard themselves as trustees of the interests placed in their charge. They, themselves, produce ten percent of all the cotton it receives. They are, therefore, personally and officially concerned with making the Association render the largest possible service to its members," Staplcotn's response concluded.

Staplcotn's factor option was widely used as a market-stabilizing approach until the early 1940s, when the futures market quotations inverted and did not reflect carrying charges. The Association continued to operate a factor account until the introduction of the Mill Sales Program in the 1981-82 season.

"During the 1925 and 1926 seasons, the Delta made two large crops and both of them produced very low grades," Garrard recalled. 'The price of this low grade cotton was so depressed at one point that no growers were willing to sell. The Association made arrangements whereby they could lend these growers practically the full amount for which they could sell this cotton and within the next year or so made them an additional disbursement of 2 cents to 3 cents per pound over the original loan made to them."

Upon receiving his check for the additional amount one grower remarked, "If the Association had never mentioned this cotton again, neither would 1, because I thought I had already received all it was worth."

On February 1, 1923, the Association began publishing Staple Cotton Review, a twice a month member newsletter edited by vice president Alf Stone.

"A successful mechanical picker and a mechanical chopper, might easily revolutionize the matter of production," commented Stone in an early article. "The present system of tenant production is thoroughly unsound. These machines would make possible large scale wage production, which might attract much larger volumes of concentrated capital than are now employed in the business.

"Mechanical cleaning devices, as an incident to ginning, are greatly needed. More scientific education, as well as its broader application, are both needful things. The building up of the soil, and the utilization of land now in cotton, but not capable of dependably producing it, these also are problems of the future.

"Cotton has never been a profitable crop over any large area through any considerable period of time.It has been profitable sporadically, locally, and during brief intervals. Economically, the greatest need of the industry is the one apparently impossible of attainment: stable prices, on a basis of a just and reasonable return to the producer," Stone lamented.

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