Carl and the Cotton Gin

by Sara Ware Bassett

"Tell story," commanded she. "Hal tell story."

"I? Not on your life!" protested the big fellow in consternation. "I never told a story in all my days. Your uncle Frederick will tell you one."

"Uncle Frederick will do nothing of the sort," growled the captain, as he puffed contentedly at his pipe. "It's Hal who is going to tell the story. He is going to explain to us exactly what they do with the bales of cotton when they reach the mill."

"That? Oh, I can tell you that, all right, for I see it done from morning to night, year in and year out. But I don't call that a story, do you?"

"It will be a story to us, no matter what it is to you, for remember that although I have often loaded cotton and carried it hither and thither round the world I've never seen what became of it after we thumped it down on the dock."

"Haven't you? That's funny!" smiled Hal. "And yet after all I don't know as it is, either. How should you know what is done with it? I shouldn't have if I hadn't happened to spend my days at Davis and Coulter's. Well, then, as soon as we get the bales we first weigh them and make a record of each. Then they are opened up and the matted material is spread out so the coarsest of the dirt, such as leaves, sand, stems, and bits of dry pods will be loosened and fall out. To accomplish this we have opening machines of various kinds with beaters, fans, and rollers and by these methods the cotton is cleaned and pressed into a flat sheet or lap. Afterward we start in to mix the varieties in the different bales."

"What for?" questioned Carl.

"Oh, because to get good results you have to have a blend of varieties," Hal explained.

"But isn't cotton cotton?" inquired Mary.

"Not a bit it isn't," grinned young Harling. "Some cotton is far and away better than another. Often it has had better care, better weather, or better soil; or maybe it has grown more evenly and therefore has less unripe stuff mixed in with it. Or perhaps it was a finer, more highly cultivated kind in the first place. There are a score of explanations. Anyhow it is better, and because it is we do not use it all by itself. Instead we use it to grade up some that is less fine in quality. After the bales have been classified we take a little of this and a little of that until we have struck a good average. It goes without saying that we never mix two extremes, or put the best and the worst together. That wouldn't do at all. We aim to produce a mean between these two qualities. All this mixing is not, however, done by hand, as you might think to hear me talk. No, indeed! We have bale-breakers or cotton-pullers to do the work. We simply put several sheets or laps of different quality cotton one on top of another and then let the spikes of the machines tear it into fragments and mix it up."