MECHANIZING THE COTTON HARVEST — STREET 423 



twist the lint from the boll. According to his own account, it was 

 while lying in bed one night in the spring of 1927 that he remembered 

 how the morning dew had caused the cotton to cling to his fingers when 

 he had picked cotton as a boy. He also recalled that his grandmother 

 had always moistened the spindle of her spinning wheel in order to 

 get the cotton to adhere. 



"I jumped out of bed," he wrote, "and found some absorbent 

 cotton and a nail for testing. I licked the nail and twirled it in the 

 cotton and found that it would work." 18 



Rust thereupon returned to Texas, where he worked out the plans 

 for an experimental model. It differed from previous pickers chiefly 

 in the use of moistened smooth-wire spindles instead of roughened, 

 barbed, or twisted spindles to secure aggressive picking action. It 

 also employed a simplified endless-belt mechanism to position the 

 rows of spindles in the plants without raking and injuring the bolls. 

 As the loaded spindles traveled on their circuit they were easily 

 stripped clean by pairs of traveling steel ribbons. Although his 

 machine subsequently underwent many modifications, the picking 

 principle has been preserved in essentially its original form in machines 

 based on Rust patents currently in use. 



Rust's first patent was filed in January 1928, and his first test 

 model was completed that year. He was joined by his brother Mack, 

 who had been employed in Schenectady as an electrical engineer, 

 and together they embarked upon a series of trials and improvements. 

 Although they had many discouragements with the performance of 

 the early models and their financial backing remained meager, they 

 aroused the interest of a number of supporters who shared the humani- 

 tarian outlook the Rust brothers were attempting to apply in the 

 introduction of their invention. 



The Rust harvester set a record when it picked a bale of cotton 

 in one day during a test conducted at Waco, Tex., in 1931. Two 

 years later an improved model picked five bales in a single day at 

 the Delta Experiment Station at Stoneville, Miss. These tests received 

 little publicity, however, and it was not until the publication of an 

 article in national magazines in early 1935 that the invention and its 

 social implications became the subject of intense public discussion. 19 

 Another public field trial was held under the auspices of the Delta 

 Experiment Station on August 31, 1936. This time, under rather 

 favorable conditions, the machine picked at the rate of four-fifths 



18 Rust, op. cit, p. 15. 



"Carlson, Oliver, The revolution in cotton, Anier. Mercury, vol. 34, pp. 

 129-136, February 1935; reprinted in condensed form in Reader's Digest, vol. 

 26, pp. 13-16, March 1935. 



451800—58 28 



