44 COTTON CULTURE. 



her of baskets is -large, some other plan can easily be de- 

 vised by one who is studying how to get the greatest 

 amount of work done 'in the shortest time, and with the 

 least wear of muscle. 



The month of October is the height of the picking 

 season in the best cotton regions. Many fields that were 

 rapidly picked early in September, are now literally " white 

 for the harvest." Now the planter cannot urge his work 

 too zealously. But let him not, in his pushing, encroach 

 upon the hours of relaxation and sleep. His rule 

 should be : " Gather no cotton upon which the sun is not 

 shining, and to pay high for fast picking rather than for 

 night work." 



At times, in the picking season, it will be advisable to 

 divide the force, especially where it is large, into "fast 

 pickers" and "the trash gang," instructing the former to 

 press along, and gather rapidly all the fair clean cotton 

 that is hanging open on the upper branches of the bush, 

 the others to follow, gleaning all that remains, the imper- 

 fect bolls, that which has fallen to the ground, or been 

 trailed in the dirt. 



The picking season lasts from three to four months, in- 

 cluding all of September, October, and November, and 

 frequently a part of August and December. But where 

 cotton opens early, there is no reason why it should not be 

 nearly all gathered by the tenth of December. 



In the older regions of the South, as Georgia and South 

 Carolina, it has been the usual practice to weigh but once 

 a day, and to require a hundred and fifty pounds as a 

 day's work. In good open cotton, a fast hand will gather 

 this amount in five or six hours, but in the beginning, as at 

 the close of the season, the whole day will be consumed 

 in picking this number of pounds. 



It requires rather more than three times the weight of 

 lint to make a given amount of unginned cotton. Thus, 

 from fifteen to eighteen hundred pounds of cotton in the 



