Cotton

“ Mrs. McGregor predicted. "Every tree and bush is laden already."
"The little shrubs in the park look like cotton bushes," replied Uncle Frederick over his shoulder. "Look, youngsters! You were asking about cotton when it is ripe. That is much the way it looks." He motioned toward the vista of bending foliage.
"How pretty it is!" said Mary.
"And in reality cotton is prettier by far, for there is always the blue of the sky, the gold of the sunshine, and the green of the country. It is as if one had a snowstorm in summer." ”

“ In itself the cotton is a pretty shrub, its yellow blossom with claret-coloured heart closely resembling the lemon-coloured hybiscus, while its bursting pods offer their soft white fluff to all comers. But a softer, silkier cotton for stuffing pillows, is that obtained from the tall cotton-tree, with the scarlet blossom and long green pod. ”

“ COTTON, a soft downy substance; the production of the gossypium, L. or cotton-tree, a genus of plants comprising twelve species, all of which are natives of warm climates, though four only are cultivated in fields to a very considerable extent. This plant is propagated by seeds, and when reared in Britain, requires to be kept in a hot-house, where it will produce both seeds and its peculiar down.
The cotton used in the manufactures of Britain, is chiefly obtained from the West Indian plantations. It is, in general, of a pale red, but sometimes so short as to be unfit for spinning. ”

“ As the tree only attains to a height of from twelve to twenty feet, it is difficult to distinguish the tree cotton and the shrub cotton when referred to by travellers.
The cotton plant, in all its varieties, requires a sandy soil. It flourishes on the rocky hills of Hindostan, Africa, and the West Indies, and will grow where the soil is too poor to produce any other valuable crop.
Cotton has always been regarded as indigenous to India, and as the characteristic clothing material of that country, as flax is of Egypt, silk of China, and the wool of sheep and goats of Northern Asia. ”

“ But, much cotton is produced in the cotton States, and by the labour of somebody; much cotton is sold and somebody must be paid for it; there are rich people; there are good markets; there is hospitality, refinement, virtue, courage, and urbanity at the South. ”

“ By whomever invented, no other instrument has been so fruitful of consequences. In 1793, when the cotton-gin was made, cotton, instead of being King, was a humble garden plant, grown for home consumption in the regions from Georgia to New Jersey. When its snowy blossoms ripened, women gathered them, plucked the seeds from the fiber, and got it ready for spinning. ”

“ Although cotton was cultivated on the Eastern continent before America was discovered, this crop owes its present kingly place in the business world to the zeal and intelligence of its American growers. So great an influence does it wield in modern industrial life that it is often called King Cotton. Thousands upon thousands of people scan the newspapers each day to see what price its staple is bringing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The value of cotton depends upon the strength, and evenness of the fiber. In ordinary cotton the individual fiber is about an inch in length. The sea island cotton grown chiefly on the islands off the coast of Georgia, Carolina, and Florida is the most valuable variety, having a fine fiber, one and one-half to two inches in length. Some of the Egyptian cotton belongs to this species. Sea island cotton is used chiefly for fine laces, thread and knit goods and for the finest lawns and muslins. ”

“ We saw the cotton growing luxuriantly all around the market-places from seeds dropped accidentally. It is seen also about the native huts, and, so far as I could learn, it was the American cotton, so influenced by climate as to be perennial. We met in the road natives passing with bundles of cops, or spindles full of cotton thread, and these they were carrying to other parts to be woven into cloth. The women are the spinners, and the men perform the weaving. Each web is about 5 feet long, and 15 or 18 inches wide. ”

“ The following general statement concerning the cotton of India, is from the geographical work of Malte Brun:—“The cotton-tree grows on all the Indian mountains, but its produce is coarse in quality: the herbaceous cotton prospers chiefly in Bengal and on the Coromandel coast, and there the best cotton goods are manufactured. Next to these two provinces, Maduré, Marawar, Pescaria, and the coast of Malabar, produce the finest cotton [434] .” He elsewhere says—“Cotton is cultivated in every part of India: the finest grows in the light rocky soil of Guzerat, Bengal, Dude, and Agra. ”

“ The movement of the cotton trade, like that of civilisation, has ever been westward. India is recognised as having been from time immemorial its home, and although there cotton has probably been in use for ages as clothing, there is no evidence to show that the substance was even known in Europe till the tenth, or that its manufacture was commenced in England till the end of the sixteenth, century. At that time the weavers used yarn made from “cotton wool,” as it was called, but which yarn was furnished by the Levant and only used for weft, linen forming the warp. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The cotton plant. On the river Derwent near Matlock in Derbyshire, Sir RICHARD ARKWRIGHT has created his curious and magnificent machinery for spinning cotton; which had been in vain attempted by many ingenious artists before him. The cotton-wool is first picked from the pods and seeds by women. ”

“ Cotton is, he says, "the world's Golden Fleece; the nations are bound together in its globe-engirdling web; so that when a modern economist concerns himself with the interdependence of nations, he naturally looks to cotton for his most effective illustration". Whether cotton among fibres possesses any peculiar significance in the world's history, or is entitled to any higher rank as a civilizing force than, say, wool or flax, is perhaps a debatable subject, but in view of the numerous histories of cotton culture and cotton manufacture which have been written. ”

“ These were the works of men who lived thousands of years before the times of the Incas, and amongst their manufactures was that of cotton.
In 1831, Lord Colchester brought from ancient tombs at Arica, in Peru, and placed in the British Museum, some mummy-cloths woven of cotton, the fibres of which seen under the microscope are very tortuous, and resemble those of Gossypium hirsutum, which is probably the primitive cotton plant of South America. The cultivation and manufacture of cotton, therefore, in the “New World [87] ” seems to have been at least coeval with the similar use of it in India. ”

“ Their beauty, unhappily, is their only recommendation, for the herbage is rough and coarse, and altogether unfit for pasture, and the cotton, so called, is cotton only in name. It cannot be manufactured; the hairs are too straight and too brittle. Instead of twining and entangling, like the filaments of true cotton, they lie rigidly side by side, resembling true cotton merely in their whiteness, and could no more be spun into yarn than slate–pencils could be twisted into a cable. ”

“ Our route lay, for the first six miles, up the river near its bank; and then we turned more to the west. We passed half a dozen cotton plantations, some quite large, and saw an army of negroes picking it.
The cotton plant grows about as high as a man's head, has blossoms about as big as that of a small rose, and resembling in appearance the hollyhock, but more extensive branches. The pod is about the size and shape of the outer covering of a walnut; and when ripe, it opens in quarters, and presents the cotton in full view. ”

“ Even when the South has passed beyond the proper handling of cotton seed, she has very important ground to cover before she arrives at what is generally known as cotton manufacturing. “The manufacture of this staple,” says a very eminent authority, “is a unit, beginning at the field where the cotton is picked, and ending at the factory from which the cloth is sent to the merchant.” ”

“ Indian cotton is coarser, harsher, and not so clean as other varieties, and requires greater care in its manufacture. Summing up, the desirable points in cotton are the length and regular convolute form of the fibre, together with its freedom from mechanical and chemical impurities. The object of the earlier mechanical processes through which cotton passes is to remove all the impurities, lay the fibres regularly and in equal numbers alongside each other, without breaking or rupturing them, and without destroying their natural tendency to twist round each other. ”

“ The shrub cotton grows in almost every country where the annual herbaceous cotton is found. Its duration varies according to the climate. In some places, as in the West Indies, it is biennial or triennial; in others, as in India, Egypt, &c., it lasts from six to ten years; in the hottest climates it is perennial; and in the cooler countries it becomes an annual.
The tree-cotton, Gossypium arboreum, grows in India, Egypt, China, the interior and western coast of Africa, and in some parts of America. ”

“ Native-grown cotton can be seen being drawn into thread by hand, and although, as just stated, most of the straw work—flat, dish-shape and baskets with covers, like a lady’s house receptacle for needles, cotton, thimbles, etc.—is done in the outlying villages, men and women are also practising the industry in the market. ”

“ This description by Theophrastus is remarkably correct as applied to the herbaceous variety of the cotton-plant, from which the chief supply of cotton for spinning and weaving into cloth has always been obtained. In its mode of growth—branched, spreading, and flexible—it may well be likened to the dog-rose; and its palmate leaves bear a close resemblance to those of the black mulberry, which differ little from the leaves of some varieties of the vine. ”

“ It is evident that the manufacture of cotton in India [66] must date from a very remote period indeed, for long before the time of Herodotus the processes of weaving and dyeing it had attained to a degree of excellence which indicates considerable previous experience; and a large export trade in white and coloured cotton fabrics had even then been established. ”

“ 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. ”

“ India produces several varieties of cotton, both of the herbaceous and the tree kinds. Marco Polo mentions that “cotton is produced in Guzerat in large quantities from a tree that is about six yards in height, and bears during twenty years; but the cotton taken from trees of this age is not adapted for spinning, but only quilting. Such, on the contrary, as is taken from trees of twelve years old, is suitable for muslins and other manufactures of extraordinary fineness [431] .” ”

“ Although cotton is cultivated mainly for the fiber surrounding the seeds, its by-products, the seeds and stalks, are of great commercial importance, being manufactured into oil-meal, oil cakes, cottolene, etc. There are about fifty species of the cotton plant but only a few are cultivated, the best known and most commonly used being the "American Upland," which is now cultivated in many parts of the world. ”

“ There is also nankeen-colored cotton here, (the tree seeming in every respect like that of the white;) and afterwards, in Brazil, I saw green-seed cotton, in which the seed (generally seven in number for each boll, or rather for each division of it, for the boll seemed to hold the cotton in four distinct parts) were aggregated in a single knot, and enveloped by the cotton. An active man will pick one hundred pounds of cotton a day.
“Yucca,” (cassava root,) which is grown from the stalk of the plant, is planted at any time. ”

“ The cotton plant is indigenous to many tropical countries, in which it is often found in a wild state. The product of the wild plant is, however, quite unsuitable for manufacturing purposes, and, even in cases where cotton is produced by cultivation, the value of the fibre varies very largely. ”