350 PLANTS AND MAN 



The lint, as cotton fiber is called, matures in about six months, 

 at which time the bolls split open, exposing it along with the 

 enclosed seeds, and allowing the entire mass to be picked out by 

 hand. Very recently there has appeared on the market a me- 

 chanical cotton picker which is driven through the fields and 

 picks the cotton far more quickly than a number of human 

 pickers manage. Rain at the time of picking may seriously 

 affect the cotton crop, since the fibers rot easily when wet. Being 

 practically pure cellulose, cotton takes very little nutrient material 

 from the soil; therefore, cotton crops have been grown repeatedly, 

 sometimes for as long as forty years, on the same area. This, 

 however, is a bad practice for reasons other than soil nutrition; 

 it especially favors the increasing hazards of insects and disease, 

 which are ever present dangers to all cultivated crops, but even 

 more so to cotton. 



Before cotton, as it comes from the field, is manufactured into 

 textiles, several processes known collectively as ginning and 

 milling are involved. In the ginning of cotton the fiber is removed 

 and separated from the seeds, after which it is baled and trans- 

 ported to the cotton mills. Here it is given a final cleaning to 

 remove any fragments of bolls or other foreign matter, and then 

 extracted of its short fibers which are not used for textile manu- 

 facture. Finally the long lint is combed to straighten and dis- 

 tribute the fibers evenly, and spun into thread. 



The chief use of cotton is in the manufacture of textiles of all 

 kinds. Since the growth of the automobile industry, cotton has 

 become an important constituent in rubber tire fabrics. Absorb- 

 ent cotton, used in surgery and in the manufacture of cellulose 

 products discussed in Chapter 23, is prepared by removing 

 chemically the outer oily layer of the cotton fiber. In this 

 condition it will absorb almost twenty times its own weight 

 of water. The short fibers or linters, the seeds, and the stalks, 

 which formerly were waste products, today constitute some of 

 the most valuable products of the cotton plant. Fiber boards and 

 paper from the stalks; oil, stock food and fertilizer from the 

 seeds, and cellulose products from linters are only part of the 

 important by-products of the cotton industry. 



