The Gullet Gin Company continued well into the twentieth century and was eventually absorbed by Moss-Gordin and then Continental Gin Company. Opened in 1928 as the Newman and Kinnebrew Gin in Homer, Louisiana, it was probably the first electric-powered gin in the state and utilized the latest industrial ginning system. The machinery was never upgraded to handle mechanically picked cotton, and was eventually dismantled, restored and reinstalled in a new building at the Louisiana State Cotton Museum. The Homer Gin represents the technology and work conditions experienced by the last generation to know the dominance of the cotton industry in their lives. In the 1920s, cotton gins such as this one were spread across north Louisiana, sometimes only a few miles apart, serving an economic need as well as being a center of community activity during the harvest season.
Gins are a necessary ingredient in cotton culture in the United States.
The machines themselves remove the tenacious seeds from the fiber of the upland cotton plant, making the fiber available for manufacturing into cloth. The development of the sawtooth gin technology in the 1790s was a pivotal event in United States history. Within a generation, cotton became the young nation s number one export, contributing to the growth of shipping in New York City and New Orleans, textile manufacturing in New England, and westward expansion into the Mississippi River valley. By the twentieth century, cotton culture had a grip on most of the agricultural, rural South. The ginning business was being separated from plantation operations and small farmers and planters alike could take their cotton to new commercial gins, such as the Homer Gin, that employed efficient industrial systems.