No crop, it is said, is so beautiful as growing cotton. The plants are low, with dark-green leaves, the flowers, which are yellow at first, changing by degrees to white, and then to deep pink. The cotton-fields look like great flower-gardens.
As the blossoms die they are replaced by the young bolls, or pods, which contain the seeds. From the seeds grow long vegetable hairs, which form white locks in the pods. These fibres are the cotton. When the pods become ripe and open, the cotton bursts out and covers them with a puff of soft, white down.
Cotton-Field in Blossom.
The height of the picking season is in October. As no satisfactory machine for picking cotton has been invented, it is usually done by hand, and negroes for the most part are employed. Lines of pickers pass between the rows, gathering the down and crowding it into wide-mouthed sacks hanging from their shoulders or waists. At the ends of the rows are great baskets, into which the sacks are emptied, and then the cotton is loaded into wagons which carry it to the gin-house.
If damp, the cotton is dried in the sun. The saw-teeth of the cotton-gin, as we have seen, separate the cotton fibre from the seeds. Then the cotton is pressed down by machine presses and packed into bales, each usually containing five hundred pounds, after which it is sent to the factory.
Various processes are employed to free the cotton from dirt and to loosen the lumps. When it is cleaned, it is rolled out into thin sheets and taken to the carding-machine. This, with other machines, prepares the cotton to be spun into yarn, which is wound off on large reels. The yarn is then ready to be either twisted into thread or woven into cloth on the great looms.
The United States produces an average of eleven million bales of cotton every year, and this is nearly sixty-seven per cent of the production of the whole world. Cotton is now the second crop in the United States, the first being Indian corn.
WHEAT
Another great industry is the growing of wheat, which is the foundation of much of our food. Wheat is a very important grain and is extensively cultivated.