COTTON 149 



the Under-Secretary of State. We all owe a great debt of 

 gratitude to the Duke of Marlborough, who inaugurated this 

 wise and businesslike procedure. There is no doubt that 

 meetings of this sort save an immense amount of time and 

 misunderstanding, and it would be a good thing if those 

 officials who are connected with cotton growing in Africa 

 or elsewhere would occasionally visit us in Manchester. I 

 can promise them that we would receive them with all hos- 

 pitality, and I think both sides would benefit by an inter- 

 change of ideas. 



It was only fitting that the first large saw-ginning 

 factory to be erected in the British Empire should have 

 been named after the Duke of Marlborough, and the Marl- 

 borough Ginnery at Ibadan has turned out many thousands 

 of bales since it was first erected in 1905. In this con- 

 nection I should just point out that large ginneries are 

 much more economical than small ones, and especially so 

 as the cotton can at once be efficiently packed in a hydraulic 

 baling press. It is a most dangerous thing to gin cotton 

 in small ginneries and then to convey the lint in lightly- 

 pressed bales to a central baling factory. We have suffered 

 very much from stained and damaged cotton by this 

 method of working, but once the cotton is efficiently baled, 

 it will stand a good deal of exposure without damage. 

 Probably in the early stages of the industry small gin- 

 neries may be necessary, but one cannot have a powerful 

 hydraulic press at each small ginning factory, and our ex- 

 perience leads us to believe that it is better to incur the 

 increased cost of conveying the cotton in the unginned 

 state to a large central ginning factory. There is also the 

 further point that the spinner does not like small bales, 

 and in addition the charges for handling the same are higher 

 in proportion. It is no exaggeration to say that cotton 

 packed in large hydraulic pressed bales will nett at least 

 one halfpenny per pound more than when loosely packed 

 in small bales. 



The Association's present type of ginnery consists of 

 two batteries of four gins each, with 70 saws in each gin. 

 The cotton is automatically conveyed by pneumatic feed 

 to the gins, and thence to the press, which will turn out 

 eight bales of 400 Ib. of lint cotton per hour, or about 

 12,000 bales in the season. The weight of the bales is 

 regulated by an electric attachment, so that each bale 

 contains exactly 400 Ib. of lint, consequently when a spin- 

 ner buys so many bales of cotton he knows exactly what 

 amount of cotton he will receive. The bales measure 80 



