358 



FARMERS' REGISTER— PREPARING COTTON FOR MARKET. 



ever known that strong cold winds or very bright 

 suns, if continued too long, have an injurious ef- 

 fect upon the fibre of the cotton; and this extreme 

 exposure to either wind or rain is, therefore, care- 

 fully avoided, and the cotton leli no longer upon 

 the drying floors than is necessary to preserve it 

 from heating in the house. Before it is put up 

 finally in the house, it is usual and quite proper to 

 pass it through what is called a "VVhipper" to 

 shake off any sand or broken leaves, or any other 

 extraneous matter that may have attached itself 

 to the cotton, either in the field or in the gathering. 

 The cotton having been gathered, dried upon the 

 floors, and whii)ped, is ready for the next opera- 

 tion, or ginning. 



The whipjjer, which is a very necessary instru- 

 ment in the well preparing of cotton, is made of 

 wood, is a long barrel, composed of slats, or reeds, 

 (or it might be better made of wire,) s'ix or eight 

 feet in length, and two leet in diameter, Avith one 

 end closed and the other open^ and is supported 

 at the two ends by feet of different lengths, so that 

 the barrel in its horizontal position declines about 

 one foot at the lower end; a hopper containmg 

 about a bushel rests upon the upper side of the 

 barrel, at the upper enclosed end of it. This hop- 

 per lets the cotton that is to be cleaned, fall into the 

 barrel, through which runs in its whole length a 

 shaft which is turned by the hand, by a crank at- 

 tached to the shaft at the end. This shaft is inter- 

 sected by rods, which reach to within an inch of 

 the barrel. The cotton, as it falls from the hop- 

 per, is whirled round and round by these rods, 

 until it escapes at the lower end of the barrel, by 

 which time any sand or dirt, or leaves, or other 

 matter, attached to the cotton has escaped through 

 the spaces intentionally left between the slats or 

 reeds, which constitute the external ri.ia of this 

 barrel or whipper. This whipping was formerly 

 performed as well upon the cotton in the seed as 

 after it was separated from the seed; but the second 

 operation of the whipper has latterly been discon- 

 tinued under a belief that it produced a stringy 

 appearance in the cotton wool. 



The whipping of cotton at its first gathering 

 and while attached to the seed, is really beneficial 

 and should never be omitted. Wlien these opera- 

 tions are completed, the harvest may be consider- 

 ed as closed, and the preparation of the cotton for 

 market really begins. — Many machines have been 

 designed, and many forms of the same machine 

 adopted, for separating the seed from the sea island 

 cotton, but all of them at last resolve themselves 

 into two wooden rollers turning by opposite move- 

 ments upon each other. The rollers arc from htilf 

 an inch to an inch in diameter, and revolve from 

 one hundred times to five hundred times in a mi- 

 nute. The whole resolving itself into this simple 

 rule, that the smaller the rollers and the slower 

 they revolve, the cleaner will be the cotton sepa- 

 rated from the seed, because if the rollers are an 

 inch in diameter, and above all if they revolve 

 with a high velocity, they will take in soft seeds, 

 email seeds, and false seeds or motes as they are 

 called, and in crushing them in their passage 

 through the rollers, will stain and injure the cotton 

 in its appearance. 



Much money has been spent upon costly ma- 

 chines, propelled by horses, by water or by wind, 

 first in the Bahama Islands, and for many years 

 in Georgia and Carolina, but at last most of the 



growers ot sea island cotton, have returned to their 

 first and most simple machine, to wit, two 

 wooden rollers kept together by a wooden frame, 

 and a square shaft, upon which is fixed a wooden 

 or iron fly wheel, trom two to three leet in diameten 

 The iron cranks A\'hich turn the rollers are con- 

 nected by strips of wood with a treadle worked by 

 the loot, this treadle runs under the machine, and 

 is connected at the farther end of the floor of the 

 house, by sockets within which it revolves; the 

 man stands therefore m the front of the rollers, 

 with a board between him and the rollers, ui)on 

 which he holds a large handful of seed cotton, 

 which he presents froni time to time to the rollers, 

 that are kept in motion by the pressure of the foot 

 upon the treadle, — this labor from habit becomes 

 easy, as the feet is often changed in the operation. 

 The task expected from the laborer with the ma- 

 chine, (which costs when new and complete ten 

 American dollars,) is from twenty-five to thirty 

 pounds per day* Women from their careful at- 

 tention, in keepmg the rollers while they revolve 

 upon each other, well supplied with seed cotton, 

 were unquestionably the best ginners, as they are 

 called from the term gin applied to the machine, 

 but in process of time it began to be believed, that 

 the continued motion of the feet produced a re- 

 laxed system in women^ which was likely to lead 

 in the end to abortion, or miscarriage, men have 

 consequently been substituted for this work, one 

 which being within doors, and exercising both 

 hands and fiiet without very much labor is prefer- 

 red by them to any other in the winter. What is 

 a little surprising, this simple machine, the foot 

 gin, which we received from the West Indies, is 

 mentioned if I mistake not, in the remains of 

 "Nearchus"s," voyage down the Hindus m Alex- 

 ander's expedition, as gleaned and translated by 

 Dr. Vincent, or Maj. Rennell in his map of Hin- 

 doston, as there employed for separating the seed 

 from the wool which, the Greeks, for the first tunc, 

 saw growing upon trees and shrubs. Could Asia 

 Minor, could Greece and Egypt, have been ac- 

 quainted with the cotton plant up to that time? 

 The inquir\' is a little curious, nor is it uninterest- 

 ing, but can better far be made, by one who lives 

 surrounded by much of the wreck of past know- 

 ledge, by many of the memorials of past time, 

 than by him who is living, in solitude, under the 

 shadow of his oaks, on the shores of the Alta- 

 maha. But we will return from our wanderings, 

 to the subject of your inquiries. To prepare the 

 cotton tor this ginnmg, or separation from the seed; 

 when taken from the house where it was put, from 

 the field, it is carefully looked over and separated, 

 or sorted, as it is called, the jellow cotton, the 

 motes, any hard rotten, that may have passed 

 through the whipper, is separated from the white; 

 this is a work of care and attention and the fu- 

 ture appearance of the cotton, much depends upon 

 the manner in which this work is done. Women 

 are employed in this operation, seated upon benches 

 with tables before them; the seed cotton is spread 

 in small parcels, taken out of one basket examined 

 and turned over to another into which the person 

 puts the entire of her day's labor. The quantity re- 

 quired to be thus examined and cleaned in the day 

 by each one, is from sixty to one hundred pounds, 

 according to the care bestowed upon the cotton, by 

 the grower; after this sorting, it is exposed lightly 



