In Great Britain there are 45,000,000 spindles running at a wondrous rate, and 17,000,000 are running in America. With cheaper labor and more extended experience, they are doing more of it across the water than we. For our consumption we make all the coarse grades, but all the fine cottons are imported. They get large quantities of cotton now in India. Egypt also is a great cotton country, producing the best cotton grown with the one exception of our famous sea island cotton. Her crop is worth $48,000,000 annually. England has hunted the world over for cotton and good cotton ground, and while we were engaged in war she was increasing her endeavors in this direction with much earnestness.
If you will notice the contents of a boll of cotton you will be surprised to find that the fiber is not the main thing there. The seed is far heavier than the fiber, and it really occupies more space when the two are crowded into their closest possible limits. You can press the cotton down upon the seed till the whole is but little larger than the seed.
The fiber clings to the seed with great firmness, and you find it difficult to tear them from each other. There is no wonder it was such a slow process to separate them in the good old days. The Yankee, Eli Whitney, went to Georgia to teach school, but by the time he arrived there the school was taken by another, and he was out of employment. That was a happy misfortune for him and for the country.
He was a nailer, a cane maker, and a worker in wood and metal. A Yankee nailer cannot be idle in a strange land. The expression, "as busy as a nailer," is a good one. Whitney looked about him to see what was the popular demand in his line. He found the greatest difficulty the southern people had to contend with was the separating of cotton from its seed. He went at the business of inventing a machine to do the work for them.
He placed a saw in a slit in a table so that cotton could be pushed against its teeth as it revolved. The teeth caught into the fiber and pulled it away from the seeds. As the seeds were too large to pass through the slit in the table they flew away as the fiber let go its hold upon them, and Whitney soon found he had solved the problem.
This is the first step in what may be called the manufacture of cotton fabrics. In another article we shall examine all the various sorts of textiles that are made from this interesting fiber, and speak of their manufacture, treatment, sale, and use.
Under Whitney's gin the bulky seeds soon began to pile up astonishingly, and it became customary to remove the gins as the piles of this useless seed accumulated. It was left to rot upon the ground in these heaps just as it fell from the gin. Another ingenious Yankee saw there was a great deal of material going to waste in these piles, and he experimented to see what could be done with the seed.
It was found to be very good for use on ground that had become poor by exhaustive farming. An excellent fertilizer is made from it. The cake is used for feed for cattle to great advantage. Dairymen regulate the quality and color of the milk they get from their cows by varying the amount of oil cake given in their food. The oil extracted from this seed is used in the arts. It is not equal to linseed oil for painters' use, but it is a great substance for use in mixing in with better oils to make them go farther. In other words, it is largely used for the purposes of adulterating other oils. Not only is it used in making lard, but it is now sold on its own merits for cooking purposes.
Two days out of New York we sighted the black smoke of a great steamer. At sea everybody is on the lookout for vessels and much interested in the passengers that may be on the craft casually met. So we kept watch of the horizon and were glad to see that a big one was coming our way. She was headed so nearly towards us that we hoped to get a good view of the many passengers that might be expected on so large a ship. When she was near enough to show some of her side, she looked rusty and ill kept. We wondered what the fare must be for a ride across the water on such a cheap-looking monster. As she came nearer we saw there were no passengers. "What is she?" "What does she carry?" The first mate told us she was a tank steamer, running between the United States and Belgium, carrying 4,200 tons of cotton-seed oil at a trip.