COTTOX CULTUKE. 67 



Keep the morale of your laborers at a high point. A 

 sad heart makes the motions slow. Hands will not pick 

 any the worse the next day for having danced till ten or 

 eleven o'clock the night before ; and, among Africans at 

 least, the best dancer is likely to be the best picker. 



Unless your crop is very large, so as to need every finger 

 in your employ to pick it out, the best time for sorting the 

 cotton is when it is first picked. Before November you 

 will not have much inferior cotton. After frost and heavy 

 rains there will be many imperfect bolls t^hat yield a 

 crumpled or kinky staple, and much cotton will be beaten 

 out of the pods by driving rains, and made muddy by 

 earth dashed upon it, or sand driven into it. This can be 

 cleaned so as to be but little inferior to choice cotton, but 

 the two should not be mixed, as the trashy will lower the 

 price of the clean with which the buyer finds it mixed. 



Many cotton growers have a " trasher," a simple ma- 

 chine, driven by a band from the drum, which cleans the 

 staple by whipping it against a series of pegs or teeth. 



Trashy and dirty cotton ought to be dried and trashed 

 before being stored away for ginning. 



XOVEMBER. 



As the season grows cool, the picking at night and 

 morning is anything but pleasant. 



Nothing will be gained in the end by gathering in a 

 cold and heavy dew. Let there be fires kindled at the 

 baskets, and in every manner seek the comfort of the 

 hands, for the staple which they are picking now is some- 

 what inferior, and their encouragement is that the long 

 pull of monotonous and wearisome labor is nearly over. 

 If the market is favorable, ginning is begun this month, 

 and often much earlier. A good eighty saw gin will pick 

 off less than a bale an hour, say eight bales in ten or twelve 

 hours. But this rapid ginning generally damages the 

 staple, and for that reason is not recommended. 



