Cotton Raising. Cotton is planted with a machine, which puts it under the ground about one and one-half to two inches. It is not planted as corn is, that is, dropped so far apart, but is planted in a continuous stream. After the cotton comes up out of the ground, when it is about three inches high, it is hoed by ordinary labor with a hoe, and is cut out or, rather, thinned. This is called “chopping out” and is for the purpose of removing the inferior or weak plants until only one strong plant is left. The distance between the plants depends on the nature of the plant, frequently about twelve inches being left between them.
The American Crop. The first step taken is the preparation of the ground for planting. This begins in the southern part of Texas as early as the middle of January, in Florida about the third week; in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana, about the beginning of February; in Arkansas, Tennessee, and South Carolina from about the middle of February to the beginning of March. Actual planting begins according to latitude, principally from the middle of March to the middle of April, and ends in the first half of May. These dates, however, are dependent upon the state of the weather. When the weather is unusually wet the start is late. The plant suffers from the rank growth of grass and weeds, and extra labor is required to keep the fields clean. In abnormally hot weather, especially after rains, the plant sheds its leaves, thus exposing the bolls, which fall off, whereupon replanting becomes necessary. In addition to injuries by the weather the cotton-plant is subject to depredations by insects. Of late years the greatest pest has been the Mexican boll weevil.
The cotton-plant blooms ten or eleven weeks after planting. An early bloom is taken as a sign of good crops. When the crop is an early one, picking may commence in the districts in which it ripens first in the latter half of July; but the usual date is the beginning of August, following on in the various districts in succession until the early part of September. The plant goes on fruiting as long as the weather is mild and open. It finishes in the early regions about the beginning of December, the others following through December and closing in the later regions about the middle of January. Frosts play an important part in the ultimate yield. An early killing frost over the entire belt would curtail the size of the crop by 500,000 bales in a season, as was the case in 1909 when about 32,000,000 acres were planted. Light frosts and late frosts do little harm to the cotton-plant; in fact it is contended that the late frosts do much good under certain conditions of the crop, by opening the bolls that otherwise would not open, and thus adding to the quantity of the late pickings. The effect of frost upon the lint so picked is to produce tinged and stained cotton. Early killing frosts occur in some seasons in the early part of November, when much of the yield may be curtailed. When killing frosts occur late in the season, when the fruiting is practically over, it has little or no effect upon the yield except as regards the color.
The ripening of the crop proceeds in three stages, the bolls nearest the ground maturing first, then those around the middle of the plant, and lastly the top crop. Pods half ripe are often forced open and the fiber sent on with good cotton. East Indian is more highly charged with unripe cotton than American. The work of picking is not heavy, but becomes tedious from its sameness. Each hand as he goes to the field is supplied with a large basket and a bag. The basket is left at the head of the cotton row, the bag being suspended from the picker’s shoulder by a strap, and used to hold the cotton as it is plucked from the boll. When the bag is full it is emptied into the basket, and this routine continued throughout the day. Each hand picks from 140 to 180 pounds of cotton per day. The average yield in the South varies from 500 to 600 pounds per acre. Every boll of cotton contains seeds resembling unground coffee; when these have been removed by the gin, there remains about one-third the weight of the boll in clean cotton.
PICKING COTTON
Ginning. The next operation to which cotton is subjected is that of ginning, or separating the seeds from the fiber. This work was formerly accomplished by hand, and so great was the quantity of seeds that frequently an entire day was occupied by a workman in separating them from one pound of cotton. At the present day the devices for separating the lint from the seed are of two classes: roller gins and saw gins. The former device is the more ancient, having been used from the earliest times by the Hindoos. In its simplest form it consists of two rollers made of metal or hard wood, fixed in rude frames, through which the cotton is drawn and the seeds forced out in the process. An improved form of the roller gin is at present used for cleaning the long-staple Sea Island cotton. The saw gin, which works on an entirely different principle, is the machine which, with its improvements and modifications, has separated the seed from fiber almost exclusively for one hundred years of American cotton growing. In this machine the seed cotton is fed into a box, one side of which is formed of a grating of metal strips set close together, leaving a narrow opening from one-eighth to a quarter of an inch wide. Into these openings a row or “gang” of thin circular saws project mounted upon a revolving mandrel. The long, protruding teeth of the saws, whirling rapidly, catch the fibers, and pull them away from the seeds. The latter, being too large to pass through the openings of the grating, roll downward and out of the machine. The lint, removed from the row of saws by a revolving brush, passes between rollers and is delivered from the machine in the form of a lap or bat.
This machine is responsible for much of the “nep” (or knots) found in American cotton, which is caused when the machine is overcharged. The Whitney gin will turn through more cotton than any other type of machine, and will clean from 200 to 300 pounds per hour. When the machine is running at high speed the tendency is to string and knot the cotton.
