THE PIEDMONT REGION. 161 



to check excessive growth, and to promote fruiting. Worms are rarely 

 seen in this region, and are not at all feared. Shedding and rust are 

 often injurious. The first is likely to occur during alternations of dry 

 and wet weather. Black rust is confined to ill-drained soils, especially to 

 those of the trap rocks. Wet weather is more likely than dry and hot 

 weather to affect the cotton plant injuriously here. No crop grown any- 

 Avhere over so extensive an area is more certain than is the cotton crop in 

 this region. Drainage and stable manure, with fairly good culture, are 

 unfailing remedies for such diseases as have as yet affected it. The 

 enemy most dreaded and most certain to require the best efforts of the 

 farmer to hold it in check, is grass ; and, with one consent, the species is 

 known as " crab-grass," " a corruption," John Drayton says, " of crop- 

 grass, as it was unknown until the land was cultivated." BeBrahm, 

 writing of Carolina in 1752, says: "Because new land produces scarce 

 any grass, and once hoeing will do for the season, but the grass comes 

 and increases in such a manner that sometimes three hoeings are scarce 

 sufficient in one season, and when this comes to be the case, the plant- 

 ers relinquish these fields for pastures and clear new ground of its 

 wood." This grass makes an excellent hay, attaining a height of two 

 feet to three feet, and yielding from one to four tons to the acre, according 

 to the land and the season. Next to cotton picking, however, it is the 

 chief source of trouble and expense in the culture of this crop. 



GINNING. 



The ginning and picking season open and close together. The gins in 

 general use are Brown, Winnslops, Taylor and Hall gins. The most 

 generally used power is horse-power — four mules and the old wooden 

 cog-wheel gearing. Such power is used for gins of forty to forty-five saws, 

 and the out-turn is about two and a half pounds of lint an hour to the 

 saw, or an average of about eleven hundred pounds of lint as a day's 

 work for a gin. With steam and water power the same number of saws 

 are made to do double this work, but it is questionable if it is so well 

 done. The cotton on the average does not quite third itself, and as esti- 

 mated, 1,231 pounds of seed cotton are required to make four hundred 

 pounds of lint. This gives seventy-one bushels of seed as the daily pro- 

 duct, per gin, in the estimate above stated. For baling, six out of eleven 

 reporters used and preferred the old wooden screw, run by horse power ; 

 two used the Scofield press, and the remainder the Finley and other 

 hand-presses. It appears with these presses, if three to four hands and 

 one to two mules are employed, the out-turn for ten hours Avork is about 

 four thousand pounds of lint in eight or nine bales. The iron arrow tie 

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