COTTON CULTURE. 45 



seed will be required in making a bale of the usual weight. 

 Ten good hands can pick a bale per day. Hence, if ten 

 hands have planted a hundred acres, which proves a good 

 crop, they will consume a hundred days in picking it out. 



CHAPTER Y. 



GINNING, BALING AND MARKETING. 



In detailing, step by step, v the process of cotton raising, 

 we have hitherto been dealing, as it were, with fixed quan- 

 tities. The directions given for the stock and implements 

 of a cotton farm, the preparation of the soil, the selection 

 of seed, the planting and cultivation, and, as in the last 

 chapter, the picking and storing of cotton in the seed, 

 apply with hardly any variations to the production 

 of the crop wherever it is extensively raised in the 

 United States. No material changes can be made in this 

 routine, whether you have selected a warm and sunny 

 slope in southern Illinois, or drop your seed into the rank 

 and teeming soil of Louisiana, in fields bordered by rows 

 of orange trees. 



We speak now not so much of what must be clone, as of 

 what may be done. The producer now has in his sheds, 

 or, perhaps, in cribs in the field, a large amount of cotton 

 in the seed. When the picking season comes to an end, to- 

 ward the middle of December, he may have a hundred 

 and forty thousand pounds ; that is on the supposition that 

 his ten hands have been successful in the cultivation of a 

 hundred acres. Every thrifty planter, however, must be 

 supposed to have anticipated the marketing of his crop, 

 and to have made, at least, some preparation in the earlier 

 part of the season for ginning and baling. 



If there was no gin on the place, it is fair to suppose 

 that he bought one in August, while the crop was in the 



