Cotton picking

“ The foreman asked my opinion upon various points of plantation management, but I deferred making answer until a subsequent occasion. In every case I told him to do for the present as they had been accustomed, and I would make such changes as I saw fit from time to time.
Cotton-picking requires skill rather than strength. The young women are usually the best pickers, on account of their superior dexterity. The cotton-stalk, or bush, is from two to five or six feet high. It is unlike any plant with which we are familiar in the North. ”

“ It has frequently been noted that even well-fertilized plants upon good soil will mature only 15 or 20% of the bolls produced. No means are known so far for preventing this great waste. Experts are at an entire loss to form a correct idea of the cause, or to apply any effective remedy.
Cotton-picking is at once the most difficult and most expensive operation in cotton production. It is paid for at the rate of from 45 to 50 cents per cwt. of seed cotton. The work is light, and is effectually performed by women and even children, as well as men ”

“ As soon as the pods crack open and show white it is a sign the workers must be on hand for the picking, and early in the morning they assemble that they may have a long day to work while the sun is on the crop. For as I told you there can be no cotton-harvesting without sun to dry off the night's moisture. The moment a bag or basket is filled it is emptied into something larger and the picker starts afresh. Before evening comes and the dew falls, the day's crop is hurried under cover that it may not absorb any dampness. ”

“ Here is one of the large items of expense in raising cotton, for the fields have to be gone over two, three, and sometimes four times, inasmuch as the cotton does not all mature at the same time, and if it did, no machine has ever been invented which is practical for picking cotton. It is hand work to the end of the year. There is a plantation saying that it takes thirteen months to make a cotton crop, and it is true that plowing for the next crop begins on some parts of the plantation before the last of the two or three pickings is completed on other parts. ”

“ There is in the cotton states a rural population of over 7,000,000, more or less occupied in cotton-growing, and capable, at the low average of 100 ℔ a day, of picking daily nearly 500,000 bales. It is evident, therefore, that if this number could work through the whole season of 100 days, they could pick three or four times as much cotton as the largest crop ever made. Great efforts have been made to devise cotton-picking machines, but, as yet, complete success has not been attained. Lowne’s machine is useful in specially wide-planted fields and when the ground is sufficiently hard. ”

“ When the bolls are ripe, they open, and then the picking commences. As a rule, the first pickings are the best as to color and cleanness, and the longer the bolls are exposed to the inclemencies of the weather in Autumn and Winter, the more the quality will deteriorate. The picked cotton consists of two thirds of seed and one third of actual cotton. In order to obtain the fibre, the cotton is passed through a ginning machine. From the seeds, edible oil is gained and the residue is manufactured into food for cattle, while the cotton is formed into bales in specially constructed presses. ”

“ In either case an adequate but not excessive rainfall, increasing from the time of sowing to the period of active growth, and then decreasing as the bolls ripen, with a dry picking season, combined with sunny days and warm nights, provide the ideal conditions for successful cotton cultivation. In regions where climatic conditions are favourable, cotton grows more or less successfully on almost all kinds of soil ”

“ Cotton, the fibre chiefly concerned in these improvements, was obtained in limited quantities from various countries; but, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, not a single pound was exported from the United States. What was grown here was for domestic consumption. Every good housewife had her spinning-wheel, every plantation its hand-loom. The difficulty of supplying cotton fibre in quantity sufficient to meet the demands of the new machinery was due to the imperfect means in use for separating the cotton from its seeds—a tedious operation, for the picking was done by hand. ”

“ A simple method of increasing the yield is that practised with success by some growers in the States. Pickers are trained to recognize the best plants, “that is, those most productive, earliest in ripening, and having the largest, best formed and most numerous bolls.” These pickers go carefully over the field, usually just before the second picking, and gather ripe cotton from the best plants only; this selected seed cotton is ginned separately, and the seed used for sowing the next year’s crop. ”

“ The cotton being planted in hills, in straight rows, from four to five feet apart, each hand or picker, provided with a bag, made of cotton bagging, holding a bushel or more, hung round the neck, with cords, proceeds from one side of the field to the other, between two of these rows, picking all the cotton from the open burs, on the right and left, as he goes. It is the business of the picker to take all the cotton, from each of the rows, as far as the lines of the rows or hills. ”

“ The implements used in the culture of cotton were shovels, hoes, sweeps, cultivators, harrows and two kinds of plows. It required four months, under the most favorable circumstances, for cotton to attain its full growth. It was usually planted about the 1st of April, or from March 20th to April 10th, bloomed about the 1st of June and the first balls opened about August 15th, when picking commenced. The blooms come out in the morning and are fully developed by noon, when they are a pure white. ”

“ The picking and saving the cotton wasted on the ground, the cleaning, ginning and packing of the staple in good condition, offers to the Southern States a branch of manufacturing the most important in the whole series of operations which neither the Northern States nor Europe can share, but in which there is greater opportunity for profit in ration to the capital invested than in any other department of manufacture. ”

“ The American, short stapled cottons can be cultivated as easily and with equal certainty of success in these districts, but are actually discouraged, though they succeed well, as being more troublesome and expensive to clean, and much less valuable, both as an article of export commerce, and for domestic consumption among themselves, than the Bourbon cotton. ”

“ Comparatively few farmers or planters select their seed, though several of the Southern agricultural colleges have set up cotton schools, and the president of the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College has actually begun to hold farmers’ institutes for the negro farmers. The cotton bale is probably the most careless package used for a valuable product. It sometimes literally drops to pieces before it reaches the consumer; and of course the grower, in the long run, loses by the poor quality or the poor packing of his product. ”

“ Some have not done well owing to defective management. But others are working day and night. The importation of raw cotton has quadrupled in the last three years, while that of cotton on the seeds has doubled. A million dollars worth of the most improved British spinning machinery was laid down last year, and much attention is being given to the cultivation of the cotton plant, although, owing to the typhoons, with indifferent success. ”

“ Two kinds of the black-seed or long-staple variety thrived in the sea-islands and along the coast from Delaware to Georgia, but only the hardier and more prolific green-seed or short-staple cotton could be raised inland. The labor of cultivating and harvesting cotton of any kind was very great. The fiber, growing in bolls resembling a walnut in size and shape, had to be taken by hand from every boll, as it has to be today, for no satisfactory cotton harvester has yet been invented. ”

“ They (the Southern States) have the advantage of cotton location, and, when they have secured new and improved machinery, will do any unrivalled business. They can save freights, buy cheaper and hire cheaper labor. They save buyers' commission, and warehouse delivery and cartage, sampling, classing, pressing, shipping, marine risks and freight and cartage to interior towns, which amounts in all to some seven dollars per bale. The Northern mills also lose from receiving cotton poorly ginned, containing a good deal of leaf and sand, which is computed at six per cent. ”

“ But the best pickers rarely average more than a hundred pounds a day, and most of them pull much less. Careless work plays its part, too, for cotton is easily dropped from the boll and soiled or lost altogether. Leaves and twigs as well as the shell of the boll frequently cling to the fiber, and are picked with it, and all these things tend to dirty and discolor it, and lessen its marketability. It 43 requires about three pounds of cotton with the seed in it, as picked, to produce one pound of ginned or lint cotton. ”

“ As a general rule, cotton-seed brought to the United States, from where it is a native to where it is an exotic, will produce a better cotton than where it is grown, the tendency being continually to a longer and better staple. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But still she produces at least four million bales of cotton, and great changes are now in progress: railways are pervading the country; canals are being dug for irrigating, and irrigation quadruples the crop, while it improves the staple; and the diversion of a few districts from the ordinary crops, with improved tillage, will increase the production to an indefinite extent.
The latest intelligence from India apprises us that in one large cotton district the American planters have at length succeeded, and American cotton is now growing there on one hundred and forty-six thousand acres. ”

“ In the four hundred pounds of lint in a bale of cotton there are but four pounds of chemical elements taken from the soil; in the oil there is little more; but in the seed-cake and hulls there are forty pounds of potash and phosphate of lime. But admirable as is the disposition of the cotton seed for manufacture, ample as is the margin of profit, and rapid as has been the growth in the industry, there exists the same disorganization that is noticeable in the handling of the whole cotton question. ”

“ The year following it cost them $1.82 a pound. We became satisfied that cotton could be raised here in sufficient quantities to supply our wants and to pay the cultivator. Thousands of the Saints have since then settled in this region, and are engaged in developing its resources. Much has been said with regard to raising and saving cotton. There is no use in raising wheat to let it be destroyed, nor in raising cotton to let it be wasted. When we visited the southern settlements last year the question was asked, "what can we do with our cotton when we have raised it? ”

“ In addition to the susceptibility of the American varieties to the attacks of the local insect pests, the seed produced from plants grown in the country is often sterile. In the districts in the vicinity of the British Cotton Growing Association’s ginneries American and native cottons are often seen growing in the same field, but as the time of reaching maturity differs in the various forms, and the cotton is not easily kept separate in the native methods of harvesting, a mixed crop is obtained. ”

“ On a Moderate calculation the Invention has given employment for many years to thousands of Machine makers and Spinners, and perhaps to 50,000 Weavers and in the agregate reconing from the raw material not less than 300,000 Men, Women & Children, its extencive use has caused the increased growth and import of cotton to an immence extent to the great advantage of landowners, merchants, and planters. ”

“ After the crop is gathered, the ground is suffered to be overrun with weeds and brushwood; which, when years have elapsed, are cut down and burnt, and the field is re-planted. Cotton here is not in classification; it is gathered and sold in the seed, and ranges from ten to fifteen cents per pound. It is generally superior, both in texture and color; but the indolence of the natives, and other causes, will prevent the extensive cultivation of that article for many years to come. ”

“ Then we grow 2,000,000 acres in cotton, but cotton in India is grown only on black soils. We want some for red soils, and we are also seeking to increase the yield and the length of staple in the indigenous varieties. In both these points the Indian cotton now compares very badly with the American. Our average yield is only about 50 to 100 pounds lint per acre, and the staple is only three quarters to five eights of an inch in length, and not suitable for spinning over 20s in warp. ”