46 COTTON CULTUEE. 



interval between cultivation and harvest, and made arrange- 

 ments, more or less complete, for the easy and rapid hand- 

 ling of his crop when picked. These arrangements may 

 be of various degrees of rudeness, from a simple open shed, 

 sufficient only to shelter his machinery, or a big-walled 

 tent, to a large, complete, and perfectly appointed gin- 

 house, costing three or four thousand dollars. 



As a general thing, horse-power is employed in ginning 

 American cotton. On very large plantations, where the 

 amount raised approximates to a thousand bales, a steam 

 gin is in most cases erected. These are matters that de- 

 pend almost entirely upon the amount of capital that one 

 brings to the business, the permanence with which the 

 planter expects to be engaged, in cotton-raising, and the 

 depth and richness of the land he is cultivating. 



The principle of the cotton-gin is simple, and its mechan- 

 ism is not complicated. The ingenuity and patience dis- 

 played by Eli Whitney in inventing and perfecting this 

 machine, and the wonderful effect it has had in the social 

 and political economy of the world, are spoken of more 

 fully in the closing chapter of this treatise. But at this 

 point in cotton producing, every good planter must become, 

 to some extent, a mechanic ; for no person can successfully 

 operate with a machine like the cotton-gin, who does not 

 quite thoroughly understand the precise mode in which it 

 operates, when it does the work well, and when imper- 

 fectly, and how its different parts are to be adjusted so as 

 to perform their office in the best manner. 



Take a wooden cylinder, say four feet long, and five 

 inches in diameter. Fasten upon it a series of small cir- 

 cular saws, say nine inches in diameter, so that the edge 

 will rise two inches above the cylinder all around. Let 

 there be eighty of these saws ; they will be set upon the 

 cylinder a fraction over half an inch apart. The teeth of 

 these saws are filed, so as turn from you as you stand be- 

 fore the cylinder. Now place your cylinder, thus armed 



