Picking Cotton with a Vacuum Cleaner 



This machine does the work better, quicker, 

 and without the waste of hand pickers 



ACCORDING to Government fig- 

 ures, hundreds of millions of dollars 

 '" are yearly wasted by the careless 

 picking of cotton. In some cases 50% of 

 the crop is left on the plants. That ex- 

 plains the two thou- 

 sand patents for 

 mechanical cotton 

 pickers that have 

 been taken out. 

 Not one of the in- 

 ventions disclosed 

 has proved com- 

 mercially success- 

 ful. About a mil- 

 lion persons are still 

 engaged in the pick- 

 ing, ginning, baling and transporting of 

 the white fluffy stuff that goes to make up 

 everything from gun "cotton to our "pure 

 silk shirts" and other daily necessities. 



As an article of 

 commerce, cotton 

 was almost negli- 

 gible until Whitney 

 invented the cotton 

 gin in 1793. The 

 American pro- 

 duction of cotton, 

 which was only two 

 thousand bales in 

 1791, was instantly 

 stimulated, with the 

 result that in 1801 

 it had risen to nine- 

 ty-two thousand bales. Since then, it 

 has shown U constant increase, inter- 

 rupted only by the Civil War, during 

 which time, of course, but little cotton 

 was grown in the states of the Con- 

 federacy. 



During the present war, cotton has 

 come to the front as a very important 

 factor in the actual winning of the war. 

 Not only is it of importance in the textile 

 industries, but more particularly in the 

 manufacture of explosives. 



Down in the new cotton country of the 

 Imperial Valley, a reclaimed desert of 

 Southern C'alifornia, there is now working 

 a cotton picking machine that has already 



Showing the cotton-picking machine in oper- 

 ation. Note the compactness of the cotton 



outclassed the hand pickers. What is 

 more, the cotton it picks is even cleaner 

 than that of the hand pickers' baskets. 



The machine — called the Gabel-Holda- 

 way — consists of a light steel chassis, sup- 

 ported on three 

 steel wheels for the 

 sake of easy hand- 

 ling. On the chas- 

 sis supporting is a 

 sixteen horsepower 

 gas-engine, vvhich 

 drives a suction 

 pump ^nd a centri- 

 fugal separator. A 

 light steel pipe runs 

 across the machine, 



Five men, one at each nozzle, are all that 

 are necessary to carry out the picking 



and from this run five eighteen-foot light 

 rubber pipes, terminating in the peculiar 

 picking nozzles, which the inventor claims 

 are the reason for the success of the ma- 

 chine, together with 

 the centrifugal sep- 

 arator. 



Five men operate 

 the nozzles, one to 

 each. The pump 

 sucks on the hose. 

 The manipulator of 

 the nozzle merely 

 sweeps it across a 

 row of bolls, and 

 the white fluffy cot- 

 ton is sucked into 

 the nozzle and then 

 through the pipe to the separator. Here 

 the cotton is separated from the incidental 

 leaves, and from the motes. Next the 



DELIVER.Y PIPE 



FUEL TANK 



SUCTION PUMP AND 

 CENTRIFUGAL SEPARATOR. 

 SljKTTION PIPE HEADER 



LIGHT WEIGHT 

 RUBBER SUaiON 

 PES 



Diagram showing details of the cotton-pick- 

 ing machine, which is not very complicated 



750 



