THE WEST: 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,...

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