INTRODUCTION. xxvii 



India, the cradle of the cotton culture and manufacture. In that country the practice of beating out 

 the seed was long in use. A more effectual modification of the same method, employed for centuries 

 in eastern countries, and very early introduced into Georgia, which took the lead in cotton husbandry, 

 was the bow-string operation. It consisted in the employment of a long bow fitted with a multitude 

 of strings, which being vibrated by the blows of a wooden mallet while in contact with a bunch of 

 cotton, shook the seed and dust from the mass. Hence upland or short staple cotton became known 

 in commerce as &quot; bowed cotton.&quot; A form of the roller-gin appears also to have been used in India in 

 early times, as mentioned by Nearchus, and consisted of two rollers of teak-wood fluted longitudinally, 

 and revolving nearly in contact. In 1728 we find mention of &quot;little machines, which being played by 

 the motion of a wheel, the cotton falls on one side, and the seed on the other, and thus they are 

 separated.&quot; 



About the year 1742, M. Dubrcuil, a wealthy planter of New Orleans, invented a cotton-gin which 

 was so far successful as to give quite an impulse to the cotton culture ill Louisiana, but nearly forty 

 years later the colonial authorities in Paris recommended the importation of machinery from India for 

 cleaning the seed. 



Early in the Revolution, Kinzey Borden, of St. Paul s Parish, South Carolina, constructed a roller- 

 gin, believed to have been the first ever used in that State for cleaning the long staple and silky cotton, 

 of which he was one of the first cultivators. It consisted of pieces of burnished iron gun-barrels 

 secured by screws to wooden rollers turned by wooden cranks, like a steel corn-mill. A Mr. Bisset, of 

 Georgia, in 1788, contrived a gin having two rollers revolving in opposite directions, operated by a boy 

 or girl at each, by which five pounds of cleaned cotton was made per diem. Nothing but hand-gins, 

 resembling the cotton hand-mills of India, were yet known in the south, although foot or treadle gins 

 appear to have been in use at this date in Philadelphia and vicinity, some cotton being then raised in New 

 Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware. A great improvement in the treadle gin was made about the year 

 1790, by Joseph Eve, of Providence, Rhode Island, then residing in the Bahamas, and was patented by 

 him in 1803. It was a double gin, with two pairs of rollers placed obliquely one above the other, and 

 by adding iron teeth and pulleys, was made by a little assistance to feed itself. It could be worked 

 either by horse or water power. Mr. Pottle, of Georgia, substituted two single rollers for the double 

 ones, and produced a gin very popular in that State for some time. The present form of foot or treadle 

 gin was first introduced into Georgia from the Bahamas, in 179G. It was improved in 1820 by Mr. 

 Harvie, of Berbice, who obtained a patent, and afterwards by another person, who obtained a patent in the 

 United States for making the rollers hollow, to prevent them from becoming hot while revolving. Other 

 improvements on the roller-gin were patented in 1823, and subsequent years by Eleazer Carver, of 

 Bridgewater, Massachusetts, who in 1807 commenced the manufacture of saw and roller gins in Missis 

 sippi and Louisiana, then a new country without saw-mills of which he erected one of the first in 

 these territories or any machinery for manufacturing the several parts. The Whittemores, of West 

 Cambridge, also secured patents for improvements on the roller-gin, which was in some respects 

 superior to all others, but was found to injure the staple, and was abandoned. Other modifications of 

 these machines were introduced by Birney, Simpson, Nicholson, Farris, Logan, Stevens, McCarthy, and 

 others, several of which were popular in their day, and preferred in certain sections of the cotton 

 States. The machines of Farris and Logan were improvements upon Eve s mechanism, and at a 

 recent period were still used to some extent with steam-power. Jesse Reed, of Massachusetts, 

 inventor of the tack-machino, patented cotton-gins in 1826 and 1827, the latter for cleaning Sea Island 

 cotton, and the eminent American inventors, Jacob Perkins and Isaiah Jennings, each labored in this 

 field. The roller-gin is especially adapted for cleaning the long staple or Sea Island cotton, the long, 

 silky, delicate fibre of which is injured by the saw-gin. In the original machines, a pair of rollers 

 worked by one hand would make about twenty-five pounds of clean cotton in a day. A recent improve 

 ment by Mr. Chichester, of New York, consisting of a fluted roller of polished steel, and one of 

 vulcanized rubber, &c., is said to clean 300 pounds per diem, without crushing a seed. The Parkhurst 



