GOSSYPIUM 



COTTON-SEED 



THE COTTON PLANT 



Public Steam 

 Gins. 



Mixed Staple 

 and Mixed Seed. 



Public Steam 

 Presses. 



Economy in 

 Freight. 



Cotton- 

 seed. 



Exports. 



Lard and 

 Margarine. 



cotton trade, namely the establishment all over the country of large 

 public ginning and pressing mills, each situate in a convenient position 

 to drain the produce of a tract of country within which it often has . 

 a monopoly. Naturally this has not proved an unalloyed blessing, 

 though it has had some beneficial results. The cultivators hardly any- 

 where nowadays gin their own cotton, but carry the produce of their 

 fields to the steam ginning mills. It has already been pointed out that 

 widely different lints are in consequence inseparably mixed and ginned 

 together, and moreover the cultivators are given, or purchase, mixed 

 seed. This, it is believed, has rapidly equalised and lowered the Indian 

 staple, thus rendering it imperative for the Government to organise some 

 system of seed culture by which the special evolutions of centuries of 

 cotton- growing may not be irretrievably lost, before the cultivators have 

 learned the value of special selection and intelligent interchange of seed. 



In the official statistics published by the Government of India for 1906 

 there is said to have been in 1904, 951 cotton ginning, cleaning and pressing 

 mills that gave employment to 85,559 persons. Thacker's Directory for 

 1905 enumerates 73 pressing and 47 ginning mills as those of chief interest. 

 These figures show the extent to which the ginning and pressing of cotton 

 have assumed importance. 



The necessity for economy in freights was one of the chief argu- 

 ments that gave birth to cotton presses. But that consideration would 

 seem to have engaged attention from the very earliest records of raw 

 cotton being exported from India. The Rev. Philips Anderson has shown 

 that as early as 1684 special presses were sent out from England to Surat. 

 For many years the pressing and baling of cotton were done almost 

 exclusively in Bombay : nowadays the pressing is done at the ginning 

 factories. 



[Cf. Royle, Cult, and Comm. of Cotton in Ind., 1851, 537-44; Forbes Watson, 

 Cotton Gins and the Cleaning and Quality of Ind. Cotton, 1879 ; Ind. Text. 

 Journ. (ser. of art. on Gins by an Indian Engineer), Sept. 1897, 300, to June 

 1902 ; Brooks, Cotton, etc., 1898, 202-39 ; Text. Mercury, Cotton Ginning in the 

 United States, June 1903 ; Cotton in W. Africa, L'Agri. Prat, dee Pays Chauds, 1904, 

 iii., No. 18 ; Dabney, The Cotton Plant, etc., 1890, 360-5 ; Circular regarding 

 The Lowry Bale in Planters' Compress Company, 1899.] 



VII. COTTON -SEED: AN ARTICLE OF CATTLE FOOD AND 

 SOURCE OF OIL. One of the modern aspects of the Indian traffic in 

 oil-seeds may be said to be the sudden development of a foreign demand. 

 for cotton-seed, mainly in the United Kingdom. In 1898-9 the exports 

 were returned at 37,000 cwt. ; in 1899-1900 at 43,000 cwt. ; in 1900-1 

 they suddenly advanced to" 225,000 cwt. ; in 1901-2 they increased ten- 

 fold, and became 2,036,000 cwt. ; in 1902-3 they still advanced, viz. to 

 3,974,000 cwt.; in 1904-5 were 2,518,897 cwt,; in 1905-6, 3,891,339 

 cwt.; and in 1906-7, were 4,387, 534 cwt. Thus, within five years, from being 

 utterly insignificant the exports of cotton- seed sprang into the second 

 place in quantity and the fourth in value of all the oil-seeds exported 

 from India. This has very possibly been a consequence of the discovery 

 of successful methods of hulling the seed, the decline of the American 

 supply, or simply the extended use of cotton-seed oil as a material em- 

 ployed in the preparation of lard and margarine. But it is significant 

 of India's consumption of oils and oil materials that even the very 

 large exports of 1902-3 and subsequent years represent but from 

 10 to 20 per cent, of the amount available. Mollison (Inspector-General 



612 





