[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, III, 283.]
[Footnote 31: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Reports_, 1858-1860.]
Widespread interest in agricultural improvement was reported by _DeBow's Review_ in the 'fifties, taking the form partly of local and general fairs, partly of efforts at invention. A citizen of Alabama, for example, announced success in devising a cotton picking machine; but as in many subsequent cases in the same premises, the proclamation was premature.
As to improved breeds of cotton, public interest appears to have begun about 1820 in consequence of surprisingly good results from seed newly procured from Mexico. These were in a few years widely distributed under the name of Petit Gulf cotton. Colonel Vick of Mississippi then began to breed strains from selected seed; and others here and there followed his example, most of them apparently using the Mexican type. The more dignified of the planters who prided themselves on selling nothing but cotton, would distribute among their friends parcels of seed from any specially fine plants they might encounter in their fields, and make little ado about it. Men of a more flamboyant sort, such as M.W. Philips, contemning such "ruffle-shirt cant," would christen their strains with attractive names, publish their virtues as best they might, and offer their fancy seed for sale at fancy prices. Thus in 1837 the Twin-seed or Okra cotton was in vogue, selling at many places for five dollars a quart. In 1839 this was eclipsed by the Alvarado strain, which its sponsors computed from an instance of one heavily fruited stalk nine feet high and others not so prodigious, might yield three thousand pounds per acre.[32] Single Alvarado seeds were sold at fifty cents each, or a bushel might be had at $160. In the succeeding years Vick's Hundred Seed, Brown's, Pitt's, Prolific, Sugar Loaf, Guatemala, Cluster, Hogan's, Banana, Pomegranate, Dean, Multibolus, Mammoth, Mastodon and many others competed for attention and sale. Some proved worth while either in increasing the yield, or in producing larger bolls and thereby speeding the harvest, or in reducing the proportionate weight of the seed and increasing that of the lint; but the test of planting proved most of them to be merely commonplace and not worth the cost of carriage. Extreme prices for seed of any strain were of course obtainable only for the first year or two; and the temptation to make fraudulent announcement of a wonder-working new type was not always resisted. Honest breeders improved the yield considerably; but the succession of hoaxes roused abundant skepticism. In 1853 a certain Miller of Mississippi confided to the public the fact that he had discovered by chance a strain which would yield three hundred pounds more of seed cotton per acre than any other sort within his knowledge, and he alluringly named it Accidental Poor Land Cotton. John Farrar of the new railroad town Atlanta was thereby moved to irony. "This kind of cotton," he wrote in a public letter, "would run a three million bale crop up to more than four millions; and this would reduce the price probably to four or five cents. Don't you see, Mr. Miller, that we had better let you keep and plant your seed? You say that you had rather plant your crop with them than take a dollar a pint.... Let us alone, friend, we are doing pretty well--we might do worse."[33]