COTTOX CULTURE. 15 



But in the great majority of situations at least two large 

 wagons will be found necessary. 



A gin house with machinery for grinding com is almost 

 a prime necessity. But this may be erected in the interval 

 between laying aside the crop and the picking season. 

 August is not generally a very busy month on a cotton 

 farm. 



As to the laborers on a place of the size supposed, ten 

 hands is the average; one hand to ten acres in cotton. 

 Unless the surface is uncommonly rough,, and the season 

 unfavorable, a good hand can take proper care of ten acres 

 in cotton, and five in corn, besides having some time in the 

 garden. But in the picking season, it is very desirable to 

 put two or three more hands into the field. If your laud 

 is a rich bottom, it may produce six hundred pounds, or a 

 bale and a half of ginned cotton to the acre, and it is a 

 very smart picker that can get out fifteen bales in a season. 

 Ten bales to the hand is always good work. In employing 

 laborers, regard should be had chiefly to their capacity as 

 cotton pickers, and here the difference is astonishing. Two 

 men will work together all the year, a match for each other 

 in chopping, splitting rails, plowing, hoeing and harvesting 

 corn, yet in September, when they go into the cotton field 

 with sacks on their shoulders, one will bring out two hun- 

 dred pounds, and the other one hundred. One is naturally 

 quick in his motions, and the other, though a faithful 

 laborer and equally assiduous, cannot " get the knack of 

 it," and though, by the stimulus of extra wages, he may 

 come up to a hundred and fifty, and in the best picking to 

 two hundred, he will never overtake his comrade. 



In this respect, women are better than men ; as a rule 

 they make the best pickers. The work is light, though 

 monotonous. The most of cotton is from three to four 

 feet high, and many bolls are but a few inches from the 

 ground, hence a tall person works at a disadvantage. A 

 man about five feet six inches, or five feet eiirht inches, 



