HANDLING AND MARKETING OF AEIZONA-EGYPTIAN COTTON. 5 
BALING AND COVERING THE COTTON. 
All press boxes in the Salt River Valley are standard size, i. e., 27 
by 54 inches, thus pressing a bale to approximately 12 pounds den- 
sity to the cubic foot. This size is known to the cotton trade as a 
flat or uncompressed bale, and is similar to the great majority of the 
bales put up by the gins throughout the South. 
It is very difficult to secure bales of regular and uniform weight, 
as the weight and size of the bale depend upon the weight of seed 
cotton brought to the gin by the farmer. The manager of the gin 
weighs the wagon and cotton together on platform scales, and by 
deducting the weight of the wagon from the total he obtains the 
weight of the seed cotton. From the weight of the seed cotton the 
ginner is able to estimate the weight of the bales he will make out of 
the wagonload of cotton. It is undesirable to have a number of 
small lots of cotton left over to be stored; therefore the ginner uses 
all of the seed cotton which the farmer has on his wagon and dis- 
tributes the weight into the most convenient number of bales. He 
may be able to make either three light-weight or two heavy bales. 
The first cotton baled in the Salt River Valley was not' covered 
sufficiently. Side strips were not used, nor were the heads properly 
covered. One of the gins used second-hand sugar bags as a wrap- 
ping, which were too light in weight and were more or less rotten, thus 
affording very little protection. Plate I, figure 2, shows that the 
covering of the cotton thus baled was not such as to afford protection 
against country damage and fire under the present method of sam- 
pling. During 1913 one gin used a good quality of bagging and 
baled the cotton properly. Every gin should use a good quality of 
new bagging or a heavy burlap of sufficient strength to withstand 
rough handling. 1 
ADVISABILITY OF GIN COMPRESSION. 
A great improvement in the existing methods of marketing the 
Arizona crop could be made by the use of gin compresses. There 
are a number of well-known types of presses which give good results 
with cotton from the condensers of the saw gin outfit. The roller gin 
does not adapt itself to feeding into the roller feeder type of press. 
A gin compress without the roller feature is as well adapted to press- 
ing cotton from a roller as from a saw gin. The establishment of such 
a press for general use in Arizona might introduce a great saving to 
the producer in the way of samples, compress fees, and freight 
charges. It is a well-known fact that the gin-compressed bale is 
easier to handle and takes up less space (see PI. I, fig. 3, and PI. II, 
fig. 2), as the cotton is usually pressed to a density of 30 pounds per 
1 No. 2 Calcutta bagging has been found to be of suitable weight and strength. 
