Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1941 Feb
Contents
The National Geographic Magazine AP Photograph from Pictures, Inc. A Cotton Capsule Contained 194 0's Historic Draft Number-158 Opaque blue containers about an inch and a half long look like oversize capsules for quinine. They were made to order from cotton linters by the Celluplastic Corporation of Newark, New Jersey. Similar cylinders are used in many States for selecting jurors. Here Lieutenant Colonel Charles R. Morris, who performed the same service in the World War Draft, is blindfolding Secretary of War Stimson. President Roosevelt waits to begin reading by radio to the Nation the fateful numbers affecting 16,500,000 men. terey Bay, California. In every State south of that line-nearly one-third the mainland area of our country-cotton grows, and in 11 of those States it is a lifeblood crop. This broad belt affords three major require ments for cotton cultivation: nearly seven months of frost-free weather, ample field labor, and abundant rainfall-or now, irrigation, as in Egypt, historic Dixie of the Nile. So vast is the water surface of all the leaves in a field of cotton that evaporation may reach 50 tons a day on one acre. Therefore, irrigation has contributed to more cotton be ing grown west of the Mississippi River than east of it. As cheap water pours through man made ditches of parched parts of Texas and the arid Southwest to grow more cotton, and war constricts exports, surplus bales pile mil lions high in warehouses. Moreover, for many years the United States grew around two-thirds of all the cotton in the world. Recently planting elsewhere has increased until, in 1939, the United States' crop of nearly 12 million bales was exceeded by the 14 million bales of the next big five cotton-growing countries. India and Russia each grew about 4 million bales. From 551,000 bales reported ten years ago, Brazil has jumped to fourth place with 2,105,000 bales, passing China and Egypt. For these reasons mills build laboratories and distant universities enlist more research men to find devious new uses for cotton other than for clothing four-fifths of the human race and for helping bed, bathe, and blow the noses of civilized mankind. Not New Under the Cotton Sun Speeding through cotton fields in an air conditioned train, I read an old chronicle which told how, three centuries before Christ, Persians hung blue-and-white purdahs stuffed with cotton in their harems to abate heat so fierce that "lizards and serpents could not cross the streets at noon quickly enough to prevent their being burned to death midway"! Also how Hindus of Marco Polo's day had cotton cloth "fine as webs of woven wind," seductively transparent, "but the merchants are not permitted to transport it, for the governor is obliged to send it all to the Great Mogul's seraglio." 140
Links
Archive
1941 Mar
1941 Jan
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page