Fine Spinning

About 1,500,000 more cotton spindles were at work in the U. S. last month than in June 1936. No sudden rise, this activity was the latest stage in a cotton textile comeback slowly achieved in the face of competition from synthetics and from abroad. By the end of the month, according to the U. S. Census Bureau's report last week, U. S. cotton textile mills had absorbed 7,361,700 bales of the South's great cash crop, thereby establishing in eleven months an all-time record for domestic consumption during the twelve-month cotton year from August i to August i. Best previous year: 1926-27, with 7,189,585 bales.

This was life-saving news to Southern cotton farmers, whose 1937 acreage the Crop Reporting Board has estimated at 34,192,000 acres with a probable yield of over 14,000,000 bales. For the marketing of such a crop, increased home consumption is nothing less than a necessity, because U. S. cotton exports have dropped steadily from an average of 8,300,000 bales a year between 1924 and 1929 to 6,000,000 bales last year and about 5,500,000 in the current cotton year. However, AAA short crops helped cut the annual carry-over from a towering peak of 9,580,000 bales to 5,324,000 bales at the end of the last cotton year. The estimated carryover this year will be down to 4,400,000. As last week cotton's crucial season was just beginning, these estimates had little effect on cotton's long-time price, 12-c-.

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