The Great Depression

Staplcotn founding director M.P. Sturdivant of Glendora, Oscar Bledsoe, Hugh L. Gary of Greenwood and Will Garrard attend an organozational meeting of the National Cotton Council at Memphis' Peabody Hotel, November 21, 1938.

DURING THE DEPRESSION YEARS, banks closed all over the Delta and cotton prices dropped as low as a nickel a pound in 1930. Staple Cotton Discount Corporation rendered a definite service to the growers during this period, helping them work out of their financial difficulties.

When 15 Delta banks closed in late 1930, Stapldiscount obtained a $1 million loan from the Federal Farm Board. The Farm Board loan was used to augment the capital of Stapldiscount sufficiently to provide a base for production credit through the Federal Intermediate Credit Bank.

Staplcotn's operating expenses had to be held to a minimum. The Association cut employee salaries and closed branch offices everywhere except Memphis, Vicksburg, Clarksdale, Greenwood, and Greenville. Will Garrard reported in the November 1930 Staple Cotton Review that salary reductions and branch closings had lowered overhead by $117,000.

In 1931, Staplcotn moved into its present location at 214 West Market Street from offices located on the southwest corner of Market and Fulton Streets. The headquarters building, known today as the "Bledsoe Building", was built in 1904 to house Henderson and Baird Hardware Company. The Association later purchased the building adjacent to the main building on the west to house its Board Room and computer facilities. "Ram Cat Alley" on Staplcotn's northern perimeter added to the historic 'Cotton Row" district of which the Association headquarters complex is a part. The money for the purchase of this building was borrowed from the Farm Board at an interest rate of 7/8 of one percent.

In 1934, the Fertilizer and Insecticide Department was created. Staplcotn was the first firm to bring man-made fertilizer to Mississippi. Beginning in 1938, Staplcotn provided weed control chemicals as these were developed.

COULD A MACHINE DO IT?

For decades, a mechanical cotton harvester had been the dream of inventors and farmers. As early as 1850, Samuel S. Rembert and Jedediah Prescott of Memphis were issued U S. patent No. 763 on such a machine. By the 1930s, more than 800 patents had been issued on various devices to mechanize cotton harvesting. Hundreds of patents covering many types of mechanical pickers followed.

An early attempt at replacing human cotton pickers with machinery.

J. D. Rust constructed his first wet spindle machine in 1927 in Weatherford, TX. By 1932, Rust's experimental picker was in operation near Lake Providence, LA. The following year at the Delta Branch Experiment Station at Stoneville, MS, his machine became the first machine to ever pick five bales of cotton in one day. W E. Ayres, assistant director at Stoneville, gave staunch moral support to the project.

The April 18, 1934 Commercial Appeal announced the Southern Harvester Company was locating its headquarters in Memphis.

John T. Fargason, Jr. was among the earliest and most consistent Mid-South supporters of the cotton picker. In 1935, he welcomed Rust and his machine to his Clover Hill Plantation near Clarksdale, for testing and demonstrations. Fargason was the first purchaser of a self-propelled Rust Cotton Picker.

Hobson Brothers Plantation near Clarksdale hosted testing and developmental work on the mechanical picker that would be marketed after World War II by the International Harvester Company.