Cotton gin

“ This sort of gin consists of a series of circular saws set into a revolving shaft in such a way that the cotton fed into the machine is separated from its seeds in an incredibly short space of time. Afterward a whirling brush cleans the saws of the fiber clinging to them. It is an effectual system but a merciless one and is best adapted to short staple cotton which is strong and does not snarl. The best gins use only long, smooth blades to clear the cotton and it follows that these do the fiber far less injury."
"How does a ginning factory look, Uncle Frederick?" Carl inquired. ”

“ Captain Dillingham paused.
"There is such a thing," he added, "as people and nations being too prosperous for their own good. But to return to the cotton gin. The cotton, having been cleared of its seeds, is now known as lint, and this is bundled together until enough of it is collected to be properly baled for the spinning mills."
"What is proper baling?" inquired Carl.
"Why, the rough baling simply gathers the cotton together into a big bundle." ”

“ Instead, the model of the cotton gin got abroad and all the South started to making cotton gins until they were all over the place."
"I'm afraid Mr. Whitney wasn't a very business-like man," ventured Mrs. McGregor.
"He wasn't. Most generally inventors aren't, I guess. Still, how was he to know they were going to swipe his idea? Of course he and Mr. Miller went straight to work and tried to pick up the pieces. Mr. Whitney went home to New Haven and set about making cotton gins on a larger scale than he could make them at Mrs. Greene's; but even then he could not make them fast enough. ”

“ Those handling large quantities of cotton are almighty thankful to have anything as good, I can tell you. In India, China, and oriental countries, though, where the lots are small the people, as I say, still cling to their primitive foot gins. Here in America we have several types of gin all made on the same general principle but differing slightly as to detail. ”

“ But in 1793, Eli Whitney, who was living on the plantation of General Greene, near Savannah, invented the cotton gin. The machine was a very awkward and cumbrous affair compared with the gins of the present day; but in that day and time, and for many years after, the Whitney was sufficient for the needs of the people. It was one of the most important inventions that have ever been made. It gave to the commerce of the world a staple commodity that is in universal demand, and it gave to the people of the South their most valuable and important crop. ”

“ Vast quantities of cotton could henceforth be planted and the negroes could cultivate and gather it. With Eli Whitney's gin to do the slow and hindering part of the process cotton-raising could be made a paying industry. ”

“ I believe there are cotton-agents there attending to the ginning, which process we saw in a little house by itself, where a steam gin worked four stands tended by one hand each. The funny thing was to see them pack the bales. There was a round hole in the second-story floor and a bag was fastened to the edges, into which a man gets and stamps the cotton down. ”

“ The cotton gin bears the same relation to the cotton grower that the old grist mill did to the grower of wheat. The individual grower of the raw product is generally financially unable to set up a plant for himself ”

“ A fair-sized factory in a busy district will have half-a-dozen gins or more; and when you know that one gin will clean from three hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds of cotton an hour you will see that it will take a pretty big supply to keep such a lot of machinery moving. There is a separate hopper for each gin and if the supply fed into it comes too fast it can be stopped and switched to other gins. Once in the clutch of the relentless knives the cotton is shredded apart and the seeds drop out and fall into a traveling basket. ”

“ To the efforts of Eli Whitney, America is indebted for the value of her great staple. While the invention of the cotton gin has been the chief source of the prosperity of the Southern planter, the Northern manufacturer comes in for a large share of the benefits derived from this most important offspring of American ingenuity. ”

“ The separation of lint from seed is accomplished in various ways. The most primitive is hand-picking, the fibre being laboriously pulled from off each seed, as still practised in parts of Africa. In modern commercial cotton production ginning machines are always used. Very simple machines are used in some parts of Africa. The simplest cotton gin in extensive use is the “churka,” used from early times, and still largely employed in India and China. ”

“ The cotton gin was not profitable to its inventor. And yet no invention in history ever so suddenly transformed an industry and created enormous wealth. Eight years before Whitney's invention, eight bales of cotton, landed at Liverpool, were seized on the ground that so large a quantity of cotton could not have been produced in the United States. The year before that invention the United States exported less than one hundred and forty thousand pounds of cotton ”

“ This machine is known as the "cotton-gin," or cotton engine, for gin is short for engine. On one side of it are wires so close together that the seeds cannot get through. Between them are circular saws which catch the cotton and draw it through, while the seeds pass on.
The machine was a simple one, but it acted like magic. A hundred negroes could not clean as much cotton in a day as one machine. The price [183] of cotton soon went down and a demand for it sprang up. In 1795, when the cotton gin was made, only about 500,000 pounds of cotton were produced in this country. ”

“ Andrew Jackson was a progressive farmer and was prompt to adopt new methods and devices. The cotton gin was first introduced into Tennessee in 1803; and the state of Tennessee purchased from the inventor, Eli Whitney, the patent rights for the state, enacting legislation which placed a tax on all gins. There being some dispute about the legal title to the machine, the arrangement was not perfected until late in 1806, at which time a model gin was set up in Knoxville and one in Nashville, these models to serve as patterns for the citizens who wanted to build gins. ”

“ To dream of a cotton gin, foretells you will make some advancement toward fortune which will be very pleasing and satisfactory. To see a broken or dilapidated gin, signifies misfortune and trouble will overthrow success. ”

“ I have read your Magazine from the first number until Mann got it, and I know your desire to benefit the South. I control the patent rights on a cotton gin which works on a new principle and which leaves the cotton in natural lengths, thereby enhancing the price to the planter by one to five cents per pound. The gin can be run by hand, or by power, and a few farmers can own one in common and thereby earn money by ginning their own cotton. ”

“ Cotton is now our chief vegetable fiber, the yearly crop being over six billion pounds, of which the United States raises three-fourths. Texas is the largest producer, followed by Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The remainder of the world supply comes chiefly from India, Egypt, Russia, and Brazil. The Hindoos were the first ancient people to make extensive use of the cotton fiber. Not until the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1794 did the cotton begin to reach its present importance. ”

“ In 1793 the total export of cotton from the United States was less than ten thousand bales, but by 1860 the export was four million bales. The chief reason for this marvelous advance was the cotton-gin, for which Eli Whitney applied for a patent in 1793.
Wherever cotton grew in the South there the cotton-gin was to be found. It brought prosperity and ease and comfort, it allowed the small as well as the large owner to have his share of the profits of the markets of the world. ”

“ The invention of the cotton gin ended all hope that slavery might be limited to a part of the seacoast region, for nearly all of the lowland regions of the South, as well as some of the upland country north to the southern border of Kentucky and Virginia, are admirably suited to that crop—producing, indeed, a better "staple" than that of any other country. This industry, even more than that of raising tobacco, called for abundant labor which could be absolutely commanded and severely tasked in the season of extreme heats. ”

“ This machine facilitated the separation of the seed from the fiber of the short-staple variety of cotton, which alone could be profitably cultivated in the uplands, and thus made possible a vast extension of the area of cotton culture.
The cotton gin came at an opportune moment for the Southern planters, since rice and indigo were declining in importance as exports, and their gangs of African slaves were likely to become a burden. They could now cultivate cotton under an extensive system of agriculture with large immediate profits. ”

“ When supper is over, the women throw a fresh torch upon the fire, and, as it crackles up the wide chimney, and sends its red light and sweet odors over the room, they set themselves to their tasks of picking the seeds from the “raw cotton,” for, being famous spinners and weavers, they disdain that which has had its staples torn by the teeth of the gin. ”

“ Various simple machines had been devised to effect the separation of the seeds, and these were fairly successful when applied to sea-island cotton, enabling a man to clean fifty or sixty pounds. None of them, however, was a success when applied to upland cotton, whose short fibers adhered very tenaciously to the seeds.
The problem was solved by a native of New England, Eli533 Whitney, who had gone south as a teacher, and who invented the cotton gin (engine) which proved capable of cleaning upland cotton, and so made the cultivation of that crop a commercial possibility. ”

“ After the pickers have gone up and down the long rows and filled their bags or baskets, they empty the cotton into wagons which carry it to the gin house, where [Pg 15] the seeds are separated from the fibers and the brown pieces of the pod are blown away as it is separated and cleaned. Long ago in India and other countries, cotton was ginned by hand. What a long tedious process, for only one pound could be separated by a person in a day. The picture (Fig. 9) shows a little girl at school trying to gin some cotton with a little ginning machine which she has made at school. ”

“ With the aid of the cotton gin the efficiency of one man is raised from four pounds per day to several thousand pounds per day, and the culture and manufacture of cotton fibre was revolutionized and greatly stimulated by providing a mode of putting it into merchantable condition at a reasonable price. ”

“ One of the most important special inventions at the exposition will be the Clement attachment—a contrivance for spinning the cotton as it comes from the gin. The invention is simply the marriage of the gin to the spindle. These are joined by two large cards that take the fibre from the gin, straighten it out, and pass it directly to the spinning boards, where it is made into the best of yarns. The announcement of this invention two years ago created very great excitement. If it proved a success, the whole system of cotton manufacture was changed. ”

“ After showing us his cotton house, where he had a large quantity of cotton in the seed, he took us to his recently-constructed gin-house, where the machinery is moved by water-power. He has a thirty-saw gin of American manufacture, and a small screw of his own make, which will meet his present wants; but so soon as his large force is employed in growing cotton, the appliances for preparing it for market must be greatly increased.
His experiment in the culture of cotton has been entirely satisfactory, and he considers the crop of great importance with the present high price in Rio. ”

“ Every year the planters grew more and more cotton because now that they could get the seeds out it paid to raise it, and by and by they were exporting millions of bales. Cotton is now one of our biggest exports, the teacher said. We grow billions of pounds of it and for the most part it is the green seed, Upland cotton, cleaned by a gin founded on Whitney's idea. ”

“ There were in the United States, in 1917, a total of 24,272 ginneries, of which 3,921 were idle. Each active gin produced an average of 526 bales running bales of cotton. The number of gins shows a tendency to decrease every year, not rapidly, but surely, and this despite the opposite tendency of the crop. The Whitney gin of the old days has been improved beyond the dreams of its inventor. He boasted that one man could do as much with his machine as ten men without it. Today’s gin averages about five bales a day—a quantity which the negro of old would find difficult to turn out in a year. ”

“ With the consideration of cotton seed oil and meal we have not, however, exhausted its possibilities. Cotton seed hulls constitute about half the weight of the ginned seed. After the seed of Upland cotton has been passed through a fine gin, which takes off the short lint or linters left upon it by the farmer, it is passed through what is called a sheller, consisting of a revolving cylinder, armed with numerous knives, which cut the seed in two and force the kernels or meats from the shells. The shells and kernels are then separated in a winnowing machine. ”