198 
COTTON 
cotton to-day just as it was done in India a thou- 
sand years ago. Hand picking, hand harvesting, 
is not only the rule, but it is the only method of 
gathering the lint. 
Other crops have labor-saving devices in use in 
this final phase of their production. With wheat, 
corn, oats, potatoes, — all our leading crops, — while 
the cost of production has been lessened in our 
time, the cost of harvesting has been reduced many 
times. With cotton it is different. Slave labor 
passed; paid labor took its place. And labor cost 
is steadily increasing. It costs more to-day than a 
quarter of a century ago, more than it did a decade 
ago. 
The great hope of the South then lies in the di- 
rection of better labor-saving devices for lessening 
the cost of cotton production! Some will come, 
of course, for better preparation for the crop, and 
for its better culture, thereby increasing the yield: 
but the greatest improvement will be found when 
the cotton crop may be picked with somewhat the 
same independence of hand labor as obtains in the 
harvesting of other staple crops. 
You think this can never come ? 
We were fifty years producing the wheat har- 
vester, and from its nature — gathering grain, cutting 
it, and binding it — are not as many features included 
and complications involved as in the harvesting of 
cotton ? 
The cotton picker will come. In its experimen- 
tal stage now, it is not to be dismissed with a mere 
wave of the hand. It picks now. That much is 
certain. The time will come when it will pick 
profitably. 
The successful cotton picker has only to do the 
work efficiently and cheaply. It must be built to 
