MANUFACTURES. 593 



circumstances would materiall}^ modify tlie character of the fibre. This 

 cause depending on the small and lessening size of cotton farms might 

 be counteracted by diminishing the size of the cotton bales, as uniformity 

 could be more easily obtained with packages of one hundred pounds than 

 with those of five hundred pounds. The tendency, however, is towards 

 making the packages larger. 



Cotton samplers are in the habit of speaking of " gin cut " cotton, but 

 except witli wet cotton, or where very great speed is employed, the cut- 

 ting or breaking of the fibres is not a- frequent occurrence. The saw gin 

 does not saw or cut the fibre from the seed, and in so far is misnamed. The 

 teeth of the so-called saws are in reality small hooks, which, in passing 

 through the seed cotton, catch the lint and pull it through the bars or 

 ribs of the feed hopper, j^laced so close to each other as to prevent the 

 passage of the seed. These teeth, or hooks, pass through a rapidly revolv- 

 ing brush, that cleans them of the lint and casts it out by the draft of air 

 its rotation causes, on the other side of the gin. In Whitney's first gin 

 these hooks were made of wire, which, there being no wire at hand, Whit- 

 ney, then a law student, drew out for himself. The idea of a notched 

 iron plate, or so-called saw, Whitney is thought to have borrowed from 

 a Mr. Bull, of Georgia, who was experimenting there at the same time in 

 devices for separating the lint from seed cotton. The hooks, if properly 

 formed, never cut a fibre, nor if moving at the proper speed, are they 

 likely to break one. The fibre is spindle shaped, being largest and 

 strongest in the middle, and tapering towards the ends, so that when 

 caught Ijy the hook it gives way at this smaller and weaker point of at- 

 tachment to the seed, and is separated from it without being broken. 



Crimped and knotted fibres, or nips, are avoided in all good gins by 

 regulating the speed at which the teeth strike the fibre, and the relative 

 speed of the brush to that of the saws. The same remark regarding speed 

 applies to the weakening and straining of the fibres while they are being 

 detached from the seed. Of the two classes of gins in use, those which 

 pinch and beat the seed from the lint, as the various forms of roller gins 

 do, and those which simply pull the lint from the seed, as the saw gins 

 do, the former are much more liable to produce the class of injuries here 

 referred to than the latter. The loss in the best samples of roller ginned 

 long staple, as tested by the Willimantic comber, at the Atlanta exposi- 

 tion, Avas frequently as much as twenty per cent., due to injury of the 

 fibre, exclusive of motes, seed, dust and other foreign matters. 



It remains to mention another hindrance to the better handling of cot- 

 ton. This is a more intelligent demand on the part of purchasers and 

 consumers for the best article to be had. Such a demand, if made in 

 definite terms, would do much towards creating the supply. That it is 



