Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South

by Laura Lee Hope

"Oh, landy, banjo music suah am sweet!" cried an old white-wooled colored woman, with a jolly laugh.

Then the man with the banjo "cut loose," as one of his friends called it, and played such a lively tune that even Bunny and Sue said they felt like dancing. But they wanted to see what the cotton pickers did, and so they watched. Out on the wooden platform shuffled Rastus, and the way he kicked up, turned cartwheels, stood on his hands and danced around made Bunny and Sue laugh in delight.

Others of the pickers, men and women, girls and boys, danced, and then along came the driver of one of the mule carts who had a mouth organ. He added this music to that of the banjo, until quite a crowd had collected.

"My goodness!" exclaimed a voice behind Bunny and Sue when there came a lull in the fun. "Cotton picking can't be such very hard work after all!" The children turned around to see their mother and Mrs. Morton, who had come to the field.

"Oh, the darkies have to have their fun, and if we didn't let them we wouldn't get as much work done as now takes place," said the wife of the cotton planter. "Life is rather slow and easy down here."

Indeed it seemed so. After more banjo and mouth organ music, the pickers gradually went to another part of the field, and Bunny and Sue, with the two Morton children, were allowed to go to the place where the loose cotton was pressed into big bales.

Cotton, as you have doubtless noticed, is very light and fluffy. A pound of it, loose, takes up much room, and it is to save room that it is pressed into bales, or bundles. Each one weighs about five hundred pounds, and the bales are somewhat larger than a barrel, though of square shape and not round. But if the cotton were allowed to fluff out, it would take up four or five times this room.

Guided by Sam and Grace, Bunny and his sister were taken to the cotton gin and baling place. First the seeds must be taken out of the cotton. To do this the fluffy mass, as it is taken from the bags or baskets in which it is carted from the field, is fed into a machine.

The machine is like a big clothes wringer, but the rolls, instead of being made of smooth rubber, are rough, and covered with sharp iron teeth.

As the cotton passes between these toothed rollers they tear it apart, loosening the seeds, which drop down while the cleaned cotton goes to the other side of the machine ready to be baled.