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expenses of cultivation, he has no interest in picking 

 his crop as it ripens and the pods open ; he has no 

 interest in keeping the first and best picking 

 separate from the inferior cotton picked afterwards ; 

 he has no inducement to trouble himself in keeping 

 aside the rubbish collected from the ground. 

 For, however careful and circumspect he may be, 

 he receives not a farthing more for his pains 

 from the money-lender who has bought his crop. 

 Hence it is that the cotton is not picked from time 

 to time as it ripens, but is allowed to remain till 

 the whole field is ready for picking, by which time 

 a great portion of the crop is deteriorated by dews, 

 by the pods falling off, and by dry leaves and other 

 foreign substances getting mixed up with it. 



Dirty and impure as the cotton is when it passes 

 out of the hands of the ryot, it becomes worse 

 when passing through the hands of the middleman, 

 whose interest it is to increase the weight by all 

 sorts of contrivances and all kinds of admixtures,and 

 has not the slightest hesitation in spoiling a good 

 quality of cotton by mixing with it an old, inferior, 

 or altogether unsaleable quality. In fact, it appears 

 to be more profitable, to the ryot as well as to the 

 middleman, to produce inferior and dirty cotton in 

 preference to a selected and good article. 



But some improvement in the cleanliness of the 

 staple has been effected of late years by the mercantile 

 houses of Bombay sending agents into the cotton- 



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