Cotton Institute

At Manhattan last week 80 cotton manufacturers warily assembled in the Hotel Biltmore. They were from the 17 states where cotton is fabricated into textiles. They represented virtually one-half of the U. S. cotton industry, which operates 37,000,000 spindles* in 3,000 mills. They were wary because they are traditionally accustomed to "sneaking up on one another"-- in a commercial way--and hamstringing one another through one another's trade sinews. The New England manufacturers had begun this cutlass-heaving, had grown potent -- in a commercial way. Southern manufacturers, as they set themselves up along the Atlantic coastal plain, acquired the same tactics. This became all the easier when the New Englanders commenced filtering south for the sake of the cheap mountain labor of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. And last week these bitter competitors were bid to an agape, a love feast. As they assembled at the Biltmore, they scarcely knew what to expect.

The agenda of their assemblage was to found the Cotton-Textile Institute, whose idealized aim is to make trade researches and surveys of commercial problems and to prepare for the mobilization of the industry in national emergencies. Its practical purpose is to overcome "the lack of co-operation which has led to fatal price cutting and cut-throat competition." It purports specifically to exclude from its activities legislative and political questions such as tariff and labor problems.

In a word it seeks to be to cotton what Judge Elbert Henry Gary's American Iron & Steel Institute is to steel--a gyroscopic stabilizer that sucks all manufacturers into the smooth eddy of a single plane.

The cotton growers were not forgotten by these 80 industrialists, only neglected. These were well aware that U. S. farmers cultivate 40,000,000 acres of cotton yearly, for a production of more than 14,000,000 bales yearly* (more than half of the whole world's balage), for a value of about $2,000,000,000. They knew too that last year's average cotton price was 24.8c a pound, that present prices average less than 18c a pound at U. S. cotton markets (Manhattan, New Orleans, Galveston, Mobile, Savannah, Norfolk, Augusta, Memphis, Houston, Little Rock, Dallas, Montgomery, Ft. Worth), that at Liverpool, to which Europe looks, prices are little higher. Then, too, ecto-blasts of monopoly bounders fluttered over the aborning Institute. The manufacturers felt obligated to make a gesture toward the growers. They invited them to Institute membership.

Yet even this gesture was forgotten in the flurry of electing directors. The 80 present chose 54 of their own number to direct. Of the 54 only one, C. R. Miller (C. R. Miller Mfg. Co.) was from Texas, the largest cotton-producing state in the country. He is from Dallas. Otherwise the industrialized southern states are represented in comfortable proportion to those of the North Atlantic. No one section gives the appearance of dominance.

In final action the directors elected onetime (1911-17) U. S. Senator Henry Frederick Lippitt of Rhode Island to be their president (he is president of Manville, Jenckes Co., Pawtucket, R. I.); to be vice presidents--Manufacturer Stuart Warren Cramer of Cramerton, N. C., and Charlotte, N. C. (Cramerton Mills, Inc.), and Commission Merchant Robert Amory of Boston (Amory, Browne & Co.). These officers will serve until Oct. 20, when directors will meet again and elect permanent officers for the following year.

The presidency of the Cotton- Textile Institute is but another seignorial gesture for Henry Frederick Lippitt. In the armory of his family tradition are the trap- pings of public institutions, which each male of the line feels bound to don for just one season of his life. In 1638 one John L. Lippitt each male of the line feels bound to don for just one season of his life. In 1638 one John L. Lippett migrated to the American colonies, begat, flourished. In the Revolutionary War Christopher Lippitt (1744-1824) was a colonel; fought at White Plains, Trenton, Princeton; became brigadier general of Rhode Island militiamen; became Rhode Island Representative to Congress after the federation.

In 1812 Francis James Lippitt was born of Joseph and Caroline. He was a friend of Lafayette's, was his guest at La Grange in 1832. Of those who attended Lafayette's funeral in 1834 he was the last to survive. In 1835, he was helping the Comte Alexis Henri de Tocqueville write De la Democratic en Amerique, the first intelligent, unbiased survey of the U. S. republican experiment. He was a brigadier general in the Civil War. He died in 1902, aged 90, and curious about spiritualism. His cousin, Henry, was to become governor of Rhode Island for one term (1875-76). Henry Lippitt begat Charles Warren (1846) and the above-mentioned Henry Frederick (1856). As governor he appointed his elder son a colonel on his staff. This Charles Warren took his turn as governor of Rhode Island for one term (1895-97). He was chairman of the Rhode Island Republican convention once (1894), president of the Providence Board of Trade once (1881-82). His home in Benevolent street in Providence is a landmark.

The home of his brother, Henry Frederick, on Benefit street, is also a landmark. This cadet of the family was once (1888-89) a colonel on the staff of Governor Taft of Rhode Island. He was once (1889) president of the New England Cotton Manufacturers' Association, and once (1911-17) a U. S. Senator from Rhode Island.

In 1911 Theodore Roosevelt was regretting that he had aided William Howard Taft in getting the Presidency. Raucous cries about the "interests" excited the electorate. Nelson W. Aldrich's (Rhode Island Senator) highly protective tariff was in irritating execution; Mr. Aldrich (father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller Jr.) retired from the Senate. Henry Frederick Lippitt took his seat there, influenced nobody, was influenced by nobody. He was singularly inconspicuous in that Senate which heard the rampings of Roosevelt Progressives. (James A. Reed of Missouri served his first term in it.) He was "not so much a representative of the 'interests' as himself an interest." His role, performed without cavil, was to hold his thumbs (as had to do all the other high protection Senators) in the holes of the tariff dam which President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) and his swarm of Democrats began piercing in 1912.

Senator Lippitt performed his single tour of public duty, withdrew to his commerce in textiles. He is a quiet, honest-eyed gentlemen, now in his 70th year. At one time he was an eager yacht racer. His swallow-tailed pennant--white H on red diamond, all on black ground-appeared often at runs of the New York, the Larchmont, the Rhode Island, the Bristol yacht clubs. But he has disposed of his Wasp, purchased the Paprika, ceased membership in all but the New York Yacht Club. It is probable that he will consider his presidency of the Cotton-Textile Institute until Oct. 20 (its next meeting) as a sufficient gesture, as a seignorial action properly accomplished. In that case he will assign some youngster of his commercial staff to represent his interests with the organization.

*The spool-carrying spindle is the statistical unit of the trade. The entire world has 159,904,000 spindles. U. S. wool weavers have 1,000 mills, 80,000 looms, 4,000,000 spindles--puny quantities alongside of cot

*The Department of Agriculture last week calculated the 1926 crop to be 15,368,000 bales. In June U. S. spinners con- sumed 518,504 bales.