COTTOX CULTTKE. 51 



described, not as being in the nature of things the best that 

 might be devised, but as those in common use throughout 

 the South. 



None of the presses on the plantations are as effective 

 as they might be, and the result is that all of the crop that 

 is packed into the holds of ships at Charleston, Mobile, 

 New Orleans, and Galveston, three-fourths or four-fifths of 

 all the staple grown has to be pressed and bound over 

 again. The average expense of receiving, storing, pressing, 

 and binding over, hauling down to the wharves and deliv- 

 ering to the vessels, of a cotton crop, is two dollars per 

 bale, and almost the whole of this is unnecessary. The 

 number of bales received and shipped at New Orleans in 

 1860 was, in round numbers, a million. This million of 

 bales paid to draymen, shipping clerks, cotton-press men 

 and the owners of cotton sheds, and commission merchants, 

 two millions of dollars, all of which came out of the plant- 

 ers, and the greater part of which could have been avoided 

 by sending the cotton to market in compact, square bales, 

 thoroughly pressed, and well bound. Suppose, for in- 

 stance, a cotton grower, in some part of the Mississippi 

 Valley, produces annually five hundred bales, which he 

 sends to market in the usual way. At a moderate calcu- 

 lation he pays a dollar and a half a bale in New Orleans, 

 for having his cotton pressed over and for the hauling, 

 storing, and waste incident to that operation. Thus his 

 defective packing costs him seven hundred and fifty dol- 

 lars a year. Now, five hundred dollars would erect for 

 him a strong press, operating on the hydraulic principle, in 

 which he could make as small a bale as can be made in the 

 powerful steam presses of New Orleans. But he need not 

 resort to a hydraulic press. The patentees of several of 

 the improved hay and cotton-presses in use throughout 

 the Northern States, will agree for one hundred dollars 

 more than the cost of the common iron or wooden screw 

 arrangement, to put him up a press, simple in principle 



