THE UPPER PINE BELT. 91 



pounds seed cotton average through the season to make a bale of five 

 hundred pounds, while the past season the entire crop gave at the rate 

 of a five hundred pound bale to 1,540 pounds of seed cotton. A few 

 years ago my crop of Rio Grande, a very short staple variety, gave a five 

 hundred pound bale to 1,365 pounds of seed cotton. Cotton picked 

 damp, and that suffered to remain sometime without picking, gives the 

 smallest proportion of lint, while that picked as soon after opening as the 

 bolls dry off gives the best. I once picked a large number of bolls from 

 a patch, itself grown from selected seed, weighed them separately on a 

 druggist's scales and separated the lint from the seed by hand. The 

 poorest boll gave nineteen per cent, of lint, the best thirty-six per cent. 

 The weight of the heaviest boll, seed and lint, was one hundred and 

 thirty-six gross, and of the lightest, forty-two gross. Even such wide va- 

 riations as these could not have been detected by the eye or without the 

 use of the scales." 



Owing to the unsatisfactory character of the mechanical arrangements 

 for using horse power, the use of horses for ginning is being superseded 

 by steam engines. It was thought that traction engines would supply 

 this want, and, like steam grain threshers, would move from farm to farm 

 and gin the cotton. They were tried to a considerable extent, but it was 

 found that the exigencies of the farmer did not allow him to keep his 

 cotton, as he might his grain, until the gin came to him, and that it did 

 not pay to move the gin once or twice a day, to gin the crops, bale at a 

 time as it was gathered, so that they have been mostly abandoned. 



There is a similar diversity as to the press in use. In twelve gin houses 

 there were six hand presses, the Brooks, Schofield, McBride, Finley, Board- 

 man, and Smith, packing about eight bales with four hands per day. 

 There was one water press, and one run by steam, four old wooden-pin 

 screw presses run by mules. Four hands on the Smith or the Bogirdman 

 press will average a bale every fifty minutes : eight men and three mules 

 on the old screw will average a bale every thirty minutes ; by pushing, 

 more can be done. The delay and cost in packing occurs in treading the 

 light, loose cotton into the box, at which only one, or at most two men 

 can work, the other hands being meanwhile idle. Formerly the lint- 

 rooms were built very large, and twenty or thirty bales were ginned be- 

 fore any was packed. Now with smaller lint-rooms, and with condensers 

 coming into use as a preventive of fire, the cotton is packed as fast as it 

 is ginned. Feeders to gins have been tried, but owing to the difficulty of 

 keeping them in order, they are not much used. 



Rope for baling has been entirely replaced by the iron " Arrow " tie 

 and the heaviest gunny bagging is used. The bales vary in weight, from 

 four hundred and fifty pounds to five hundred and fifty pounds, and 



