4 BULLETIN 311, U. S. DEPARTMENT OE AGRICULTURE. 



As it was about the middle of January when these corrections were 

 made it was not until after that time that the best grades of cotton 

 were produced at the gins. Under ordinary conditions it is usual to 

 expect the best grades to be made from the first cotton picked, but 

 due to these conditions at the gins the higher grades were made from 

 that part of the crop which was picked in the middle of the season. 

 This accounts for the relatively few bales of Fancy found in the crop. 

 (See Tables I, II, and III, pp. 9 and 10.) 



In the season of 1914 the Tempe and Mesa gins were equipped 



with cleaners and feeders which, when the cotton was dry, beat a 



great deal of the leaf out of the cotton before it went into the gin 



stand. The manager of the Tempe gin, rinding it essential to have 



the cotton dry in order to do proper ginning and also to lessen the 



wear on the walrus-hide rollers, arranged a system by which the seed 



cotton, when damp, was drawn by suction from the wagon, dropped 



through the center flue of the storehouse, a distance of about 40 



feet, then was conveyed through the air-blast pipes for approximately 



40 feet, returned to the seed house, and then conveyed to the gin 



stands. This process dried the lint considerably and allowed the 



cleaners to knock the leaf out of the cotton, thereby improving its 



grade. 



SAMPLING COTTON AT THE GIN STANDS. 



In order to secure a thoroughly representative sample of the 

 Arizona-Egyptian cotton which would show the average quality of 

 the cotton in the bale, the following method of sampling at the gin 

 stands was inaugurated: 



The workman whose duty it was to gather the cotton from the gin 

 stands and convey it to the press box was instructed to take a handful 

 of lint cotton from each gin stand when a wagonload of seed cotton 

 was started through the gin, then to take another when the seed 

 cotton was about half ginned, and a third when the ginning of the bale 

 was nearly completed. It will be seen that by this method samples 

 were secured which represented the cotton in different parts of the 

 bale. In the case of gins operating 10-roller gin stands the taking 

 of samples from each gin stand, at the beginning, middle, and com- 

 pletion, will give samples from 30 parts of the bale. The amount of" 

 cotton thus taken from the bale will weigh about 1 pound, and will 

 be of sufficient size to split into types, on which sales may be made, 

 and will do away with the practice of cutting the bagging at each 

 sampling. Such cutting of the bagging not only wastes' as much 

 cotton as is taken out at the gins for the sample, but opens a way for 

 further waste and damage, and also causes greater danger of fire. 

 The effect of cutting the bagging of a bale several times for sampling 

 purposes is shown by Plate I, figure 2, which represents an Arizona- 

 Egyptian bale as it arrived in Liverpool. 



