COTTON 



1610 



COTTONWOOD 



Consult Bulletin S3, United States Department 

 of Agriculture. "The Cotton Plant" ; Watkins' 

 King Cotton; Brooks' The Story of Cotton. 



itdatiMl Subject*. The following articles In 

 these volumes will help to make clear the im- 

 portance of cotton, as well as the methods of 

 dealing with it in various stages: 

 Adulteration of Food- Crinoline 



stuffs and Clothing Dimity 

 Boll Weevil Gauze 



Burlap Gingham 



Calico Guncotton 



Cambric Lace 



Canvas Muslin 



Cotton Gin Spinning 



Cottonseed OH Thread 



Cretonne Weaving 



See, also, the articles on the countries and states 

 In which cotton Is extensively grown. 



COTTON, JOHN (1585-1652), a Puritan 

 clergyman, plain and simple, yet of burning 

 eloquence in the pulpit and noted as a pro- 

 found scholar. He was born at Derby, England, 

 and was educated at Trinity College, Cam- 

 bridge, where he later became a tutor. About 

 1612, and for twenty years after, he was the 

 vicar of a church in Boston, Lincolnshire. In 

 1633 he was summoned to appear before Arch- 

 bishop Laud because he refused to kneel at a 

 certain point in the Church service. Instead of 

 answering the summons he fled to Boston, New 

 England, where he preached till his death. He 

 is sometimes called the Patriarch of New Eng- 

 land. Cotton wrote and published a cate- 

 chism, forms of prayer and other works, chief 

 among them being a defense of the right of 

 civil authority to interfere in religious matters. 

 The latter appeared during his controversy 

 with Roger Williams (which see). 



COTTON GIN, jin, a machine invented in 

 1793 by Eli Whitney for separating cotton fiber 

 from its seed. It made cotton the staple crop 

 of the Southern United States and one of the 

 greatest agricultural products in the world, and 

 caused the extension of slavery, which brought 

 on the War of Secession. Before its invention 

 the sea-island cotton was the only American 

 cotton worth exporting. The rollers which 

 were used to separate it from its seeds would 

 not clear the green-seeded cotton grown in- 

 land ; a day was required by a workman to pick 

 the seeds from a pound of fiber. Whitney's 

 gin (a negro corruption of the word engine) 

 consisted of circular saws on a cylinder, turn- 

 ing within a wire cage. The saws pulled the 

 fiber into the cage, and the seeds were too 

 large to enter. With very few changes in its 

 original principle this form of machine is still 

 used. It is not successful, however, with the 



Egyptian and sea-island cottons, as it breaks 

 their long fiber. For these the old roller- 

 method, though it produces only about one- 

 fifth as much cotton, is preferred. 



The immediate result of Whitney's inven- 

 tion was that one negro slave, turning the 

 machine by hand, could do the work formerly 

 performed by fifty, and the application of 

 steam power further multiplied the individual 

 output. In the first seven years of the gin, 

 American cotton exports increased over thirty- 

 fold. Cotton planters cultivated all the avail- 

 able land in the South, and their spread into 

 Texas was one of the contributing causes of 

 the Mexican War. A cotton-picking slave 

 became worth five times as much as he was 

 worth in 1792. To-day without gins fifteen to 

 twenty million people would have to work 

 every day to separate from its seed the cotton 

 grown in the United States. See COTTON, 

 where an illustration appears; also WHITNEY, 

 ELI. 



COTTONSEED OIL, a valuable oil pressed 

 from the seeds of the cotton plant, although for 

 many years these were considered not only 

 worthless, but a nuisance. The oil has been 

 found of value in the manufacture of cotto- 

 lene, which is used for lard; it is also a sub- 

 stitute for olive oil, and is employed, too, in 

 the manufacture of laundry and toilet soaps, 

 and for various other purposes. The oil cake 

 of cottonseed is a valuable feed for cattle, is 

 used as a fertilizer, and in some food prepara- 

 tions. One ton of cotton seed will produce 

 290 pounds of crude oil. Whereas in 1850 all 

 cottonseed in the United States was going to 

 waste, in 1914 there were 817 mills for extract- 

 ing the oil, Texas being the leading state in 

 this industry. In that year over 157,000,000 

 gallons of cottonseed oil were produced, valued 

 at nearly $148,000,000, and the fertilizers, flour- 

 mill and grist-mill products and food prepara- 

 tions produced from the "cake" were valued 

 at over $2,000,000. See ADULTERATION or FOOD- 

 STUFFS AND CLOTHING; COTTON. 



COTTONWOOD, a large, comparatively 

 short-lived tree, loved by all who notice nature 

 at all and especially by dwellers in cities. 

 Early in spring its glistening buds burst open, 

 and the tree is soon covered with broadly oval, 

 taper-pointed, tooth-edged leaves which look 

 cool and clean and shining through the heat and 

 dust of summer. The busy householder some- 

 times objects to the catkins which fall in 

 spring, and to the fluffy, cottony seeds which 

 blow through doors and windows or stick to the 



