COTTON 
49 
years hence. Writing of this matter in a farm 
paper early in 1904, we said: "The present labor 
crisis in the Cotton Belt is certain to bring the mat- 
ter to the attention of inventors. We have 
long thought of the cotton picker as an impossi- 
bility, because the bolls are irregularly placed, 
ripen irregularly, and must not be mixed with 
limbs and leaves in picking. But the suggestion 
now made puts the matter in a new light. Instead 
of a harvesting machine on a big scale such as we 
have for grain, a small machine carefully guided 
and watched over by an operator, would be put to 
the task of taking the cotton from the open bolls. 
It does not look as if this should be wholly impos- 
sible. And as there are millions in it for the man 
who succeeds at it, it is likely to be done if it can 
be done." 
THE LOWRY COTTON PICKER DESCRIBED 
Within the last few months the South has seen 
this "small machine carefully guided and watched 
over by an operator, put to the 
task of taking the cotton from the open bolls." It 
is the Lowry Picker, and its mode of operation has 
been fully described as follows; the photographs 
given herewith making the matter still plainer: 
"The machine is not entirely automatic, as the 
arms that carry the little wheels which gather in the 
fleecy staple must be directed by human hands to 
the open bolls. The arms carry a chain with 
hooked teeth, adjusted like the chains of a bicycle. 
When the machine is in operation this chain re- 
volves rapidly and the curved hooks gather up the 
staple the instant it touches the open boll, and 
