Good Gravy

Los Angeles' Biltmore Hotel was rife last week with the easy slur of Southern accents. In the haze from their cigars, big cottonmen from the South gleefully watched pretty models step in & out of cotton garments, parade cotton bathing suits, evening gowns and house dresses nimbly converted from cotton feed bags. The National Cotton Council, for the first time since it was formed in 1938, was holding its annual convention in California.

Wasteland Wonder. For California, it was an agricultural milestone. In three brief years California had become the fifth biggest U.S. cotton producer (its 1948 crop: 960,000 bales, 6.4% of the U.S. total). Last year, California grew $148 million worth of cotton, making it the state's No. 1 crop, well ahead of grapes ($102 million) and oranges ($96 million).

Last week some of the 225 delegates went out to the San Joaquin Valley, the heart of California's cotton country, to see how the agricultural miracle had been wrought. In what had once been a sandy wasteland, they saw miles of irrigated cotton land. They winced at the high costs of irrigating ($4 to $25 an acre for water) and harvesting the crop (see cut), and could hardly believe the big yields: 572 Ibs. an acre, v. the U.S. average of 311.5 Ibs.

Much of the crop had been grown, not for a booming market, but to cash in on the Government-supported price. At 32 1/2-c- a lb., the support price was about 300% over prewar levels. Last year, in spite of falling demand, U.S. cotton growers had turned out the biggest crop (14.9 million bales) in eleven years, giving the U.S. a carryover of some 6,000,000 bales.

Bags & Bounties. This year there will be still bigger plantings. Californians guessed their increase, alone, would run from 11% to 24%; the national increase will probably run 8% or more. All of it would bring a high price, thanks to the Government's bounty. Said a Mississippi conventioneer: "It's just a case of taking the gravy while it's good."

Nevertheless, delegates wondered how long the gravy train could keep running. They discussed ways of boosting their markets by 1) removing the legal restraints from margarine (which uses cottonseed oil); 2) pushing the sale of cotton bags for feed by using prints convertible to dresses (TIME, Jan. 31); and 3) getting ECA to step up 1949 exports (which would otherwise be the lowest since the Civil War). The cotton growers, who use about 10% of all fertilizer, also looked at the big use of paper bags by that industry, estimated that judicious pressure there alone could step up cotton consumption from 16,000 to 275,000 bales a year.

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