SPECIAL CROPS. 221 



dew, but should all be picked before nigbtfall, and taken, while 

 still warm and drj, to the sbeds, to be stored for a niontli or 

 two before it is ginned. This increases the weight and gives it 

 a better color." 



Ginning, Baling, and Marketing, hardly come within 

 the scope of this book ; but, as we believe the past and the 

 present systems to be wasteful and foulty in the extreme, we 

 embody oome suggestions in regard to this part of the subject. 

 In many parts of the cotton States, a community living within a 

 compass of five miles, produce, in favorable seasons, five 

 thousand bales. The number of persons in such communities 

 averages about fifteen hundred. The average number of bales 

 ginned, at each gin house, is not over two hundred. The average 

 cost of the gin houses and equipments is five thousand dollars, 

 or one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars laid out in gin 

 houses and equipments. Now, instead of this arrangement, let 

 the planters combine to put up a factory that will gin out 

 this whole crop, bale it in the best manner for market, and, at 

 the same time, manufacture eighty thousand yards of cloth for 

 home use, which could readily be done in the four months 

 that the gins are idle. The advantages of such a system are 

 numerous. 



The planters would be saved so large an investment m 

 machinery. Better machinery, better operators, and conse- 

 quently better work would be secured, and at much less 

 expense. It could be packed in the best manner by the best 

 power presses, and baled with iron hoops, thus saving to the 

 planter the old charges of one dollar and a half or two dollars 

 per bale for repacking. 



After the principal part of the crop has been thus perfectly 

 prepared for market and shipped, the power can be tlirown 

 upon the spindles, and the remainder of the crop made first 



