FARMERS' REGISTER— SHORT STAPLE COTTON. 



859 



and shortly to the sun, that it may take ofi any damp- 

 ness the cotton may have acquired in the liouse; it is 

 then passed Iroin tliis drying unniediately to the gin, 

 or machine that separates tlie seed ti-om tlie wool; 

 after going througli tlie gin aud being sei^arated 

 from tlie seed, it is again tui'ned over to tlie wo- 

 men who are generally in a large room, well light- 

 ed with glass windows. They sit with small tables 

 before them, made, either with open slats, reeds, or 

 wire, when any crushed seeds, any burnt, or 

 blackened by the machine, and mote that has es- 

 caped the former searches are removed; and to have 

 this work well done, thirty pounds is all that is re- 

 quired per day Irom each woman. After this third 

 operation it is considered ready to be bagged lor 

 market. 



The bags in which sea island cotton is ship2)ed 

 are almost exclusively Scotch, are made of hemp, 

 forty-two inches wide, m the Aveb, and should 

 weigh one and a half pounds to the yard; these 

 bags each required li'om four and one-quarter to 

 four and one-half yards, and then are made to re- 

 ceive three hundred pounds oi" cotton. Two men 

 are generally employed at a time in packing, and 

 usually pack two bags in a day, in the manner 

 following. The room into which the cotton has 

 Unally passed, atler being i)repared iur the bag, is 

 reserved expressly lor that purpose, and is kept 

 as clean in floor and walls as possible; adjoining to 

 it is a small a])artment under the same cover with 

 a round hole made in the floor, just large enough 

 to contain the bag when full of cotton, the open 

 end of the empty bag is strongly sewed with 

 twine, round a strong hoop, which extending be- 

 yond the hole suspends the bag vertically Irom it; 

 one of the men then gets into the bag, with a hea- 

 vy wooden or iron pestle, he presses the cotton 

 gradually with his leet, and finally beats it down 

 with the pestle, until the requisite quantity is press- 

 ed down into the bag. The bags were formerly 

 made wet before they began to fill them, under 

 the belief that it kept the cotton down in the bag, 

 when pressed there, better than when diy, but 

 this is an idle and often an injurious practice and 

 should be always avoided. We will now look 

 back and collect the quantities of labor that is or 

 should be applied to every bale of 300 lbs. of sea 

 island cotton in preparing it for market. It re- 

 quires 1000 lbs. of seed cotton to produce 300 lbs. 

 of clean white cotton wool; 15 persons will be re- 

 quired to sort and prepare this 1000 lbs. tor the gin 

 or machine, taking ail weather 25 lbs. is the mean 

 quantity, received from each gin per day, tliis 

 gives 12 days labor to each bag lor ginning; and 

 10 women mote these 300 lbs. ol cotton hi the day, 

 making tor sorting 15, for ginning 12, tor moting 

 10, ibr packing 1, in all 38. But besides these 38 

 that must be good and steady persons, there are 

 usually two interior persons, young or old to place 

 tlae cotton which is about to be ginned upon the 

 drying floor, or to remove and pass it about in any 

 change of weather, thus requiring to every bag 

 of sea island cotton well put up, the labor oi' 4U 

 persons one day. The bag costs for bagging, for 

 twine and trouble in making not less than 1 dollar 

 and twenty-five cents, of American money — this, 

 with 75 cents for li-eight is to be subtracted from 

 the value of the cotton as there is never any 

 return made for the bag by the purchaser. 



The quantity of sea isUmd cotton has not ma- 

 terially increased within these last ten years, nor is 



it likely that it will increase, The particular soils 

 and climate that have heretofore produced it and 

 so while it probably owes its qualify and confined 

 to the limits first stated, that is from Georgetown 

 in South Carohnato St. Maiys in Geor<ria. By 

 looking at a map of the United States"it will be 

 seen that the long string of islands that bound our 

 southern shore and separate the Atlantic Ocean 

 irom the contuient and at these points; but what 

 IS more, the tides that probably assisted to cast up 

 these island, have changed their climate. The 

 tides along the shores of North Carolina and Vir- 

 ginia, are much less than in Georgia, and they 

 rise still less in Florida, and the Guff of Mexico, 

 that bounds the new accjulred provinces ol" the 

 American Union, to the southwest. 



Whether it is, that the cultivation of the sea 

 island cotton, has afforded, fewer inducements than 

 other subjects ol cultivation: certain it is, the num- 

 ber of those engaged in it, even within these 

 limited districts, have not greatly increased, and 

 it IS the successors, of the first cultivators, that are 

 still engaged upon this object. They are gener- 

 ally an educated people, and a stationary one, less 

 anxious after change than their countrymen are 

 supposed to be, and although, severely smitten in 

 war by England, and in peace by the National 

 Tariff, they have still clung with some degree of 

 fondness, to the places, whereat they were born, 

 and to the seas, in which they were bred. 



Short Staple Cotton.— 'The short staple cottons, 

 of every part of the United States, are derived 

 from the first and second varieties of cotton, were 

 found in the United States, from Virginia to Geor- 

 ma, at the close of the American Revolutionary 

 War, cultivated in small quantities by thepoorer 

 classes of the white population of the country, to be 

 mixed, in their domestic manufactories, with their 

 own wool. The cotton (or this purpose, was sep- 

 arated from the seed, by the old and the young, 

 with the fingers, sitting around their evening fire, 

 and was spun by the hand v/heel, to serve as a 

 warp, to be filled, with the wool of their own 

 sheep. 



These two descriptions of cotton, that is the 

 common herbaceous cotton with smooth leaves 

 No. 1 in the classification, and the 2d or hairy 

 American cotton, were cultivated by very many 

 tor domestic purposes, but I have no where seen 

 or heard of any attempt at producing either of 

 these cottons ibr sale, before tbe introduction of 

 the West India seed, and the increased attention 

 this circumstance produced to the subject. Whe- 

 ther indigo and tobacco, the great staples of the 

 southern provinces, were preferred to it, or whether, 

 (which is probable,) the difficulty which was 

 found in separating the seed from the wool by any 

 other means than "the hands, had checked cultiva- 

 tion, I know not, but probably both combined. — 

 Three or four years since, the writer of this paper, 

 having written a letter upon American cottons at 

 the desire of a gentleman in England, ventured to 

 suppose that these two varieties of cotton had 

 been introduced into Virginia by some one or other 

 of the early governors of that province while un- 

 der the patronage of the crown. Subsequently to 

 that time, in some of the long discussions within 

 and witixout the halls of the American Congress, 

 upon the American system of duties, it has been 

 discovered that cotton had been introduced many 

 years since into Virginia, from the Turkish do- 



