elves 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]

[Footnote 32: _Sout