218 HOW TO MAKE THE FAEM PAY. 



usually make the fastest pickers. The basket should be so 

 arranged by the planter that the bags can be conveniently 

 emptied when they attain a weight of twenty-five pounds. 

 Every arrangement that tends to facilitate the work, or relieve 

 the laborer, is to the credit and profit of the planter. Humanity, 

 as well as interest, demands that every thing that can be done 

 to lighten this monotonous task, shall be done. By many over- 

 seers, there has seemed to be an entire disregard of the welfare 

 of the laborers. Let there be refreshments at the baskets. 

 Kindle a fire and have coffee boiling before sunrise, and when 

 the gang come out of the rows give each a half pint with corn 

 bread. It will give them strength for their work and is a pie- 

 ventive of miasmatic disease, to which cotton pickers are par- 

 ticularly liable from working from the cool morning air into 

 the fierce heat of midday. In the heat of midday, provide a 

 tub of buttermilk, or sweetened water, and give them a few 

 minutes rest before they set in again ; the time will not be lost, 

 for they will strike in with more spirit, and the expectation of 

 another drink will quicken their movements on the way back. 

 The month of October is the height of the picking season, and 

 the planter must urge his hands to their best exertions. But 

 let him not, in his pushing, encroach upon the hours of relaxa- 

 tion and rest. His rule should be gather no cotton after 

 nightfall, and pay high for fast picking, rather than for night 

 work. 



" Sometimes it is well to divide the force into ' fast pickers' 

 and the ' trash gang,' the former pressing rapidly through and 

 gathering all the fair, clean cotton, that is hanging open on the 

 upper branches, the others gleaning the ' trash cotton,' as all 

 inferior or dirty cotton is called. There is no time so favora- 

 ble for sorting this trash cotton as when it is first picked. The 

 ' first picking' should never be allowed to become wet with 



