COTTON 



1GOG 



COTTON 



The Whitney 

 Cotton Gin 



by hand, as in the days 

 before the War of Se- 

 cession. Hand work is, 

 however, expensive, the 

 prices of labor ranging 

 from forty cents to one 

 dollar per hundred 

 pounds. Experiments 

 are now being made 

 with a cotton-picking 

 machine which will 

 greatly lessen the ex- 

 pense for the large 

 planters if it can be 

 made to operate suc- 

 cessfully on a large 

 scale, as now seems 

 certain. Improved 

 methods of fertilizing 

 the soil and of cultivat- 

 ing and handling the 

 crop have been worked 

 out by the agricultural , 

 experiment stations of ' 

 the Southern states, from which the planter 

 may always obtain valuable information. 



From the Cotton Field to the Market. The 

 transformation of the fleecy white mass gath- 

 ered from the bolls into the finished cotton fab- 

 ric involves many operations. The lint which 

 is dropped into the pickers' baskets has cling- 

 ing tightly to its fibers numerous little hard 

 seeds, all of which must be removed. The 

 process of freeing the lint of seeds is known as 

 ginning, and the machines, cotton gins. The 

 public ginning establishments near the cotton 

 plantations are operated by steam power, and 

 some of them are equipped with four gins of 

 seventy saws each, which clean from 2,000 to 

 3,000 pounds of cotton a day. 



Cross Section of a Modern 

 Cotton Gin . 



In the Ginning House. The wagons laden 

 with the cotton from the plantations stop under 

 a flexible pipe extending out from the mill. 

 The lint is sucked up into the pipe by ma- 

 chinery and carried through fans which free 

 it of dust and other impurities. It is then 

 dropped into a gin, and after the seeds are 

 removed the fleece is carried by machinery 

 into great presses, where it is made into bales. 

 The bales are wrapped in bagging and bound 

 with iron bands, ready to be sent to the cot- 

 ton mills. An American bale for the local 

 trade is usually about four feet high, four 

 feet wide and five or six feet long, and weighs 

 500 pounds. The bales 

 shipped long distances 

 are compressed again 

 and are much smaller. 

 A bale of cotton nets 

 the planter from fifty 

 to seventy-five dollars, 

 in normal times. 



In the Cotton Mill. 

 When the cotton arrives 

 at the factory it is run 

 through various ma- 

 chines which free it of 

 dirt and form it into 

 a lap or roll. It is then 

 passed through rollers 

 covered with steel wire 

 points, a process which 

 makes the fibers lie in 

 straight, parallel rows, 

 except as they curl or 

 twist about other fibers. 

 The curls and twists are 

 straightened out in a 



