The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1878-01-24
The Wants and Benefits of Agrl-
cultural Machinery.

most complicated operations OF labor
as well as in the quantity performed,
is perhaps nowhere better illustrated
than in the cotton gin. Most of US can
remember when the cultivation of cot
ton in the Southern States was CON
fined to a small patch" on a farm,
capable of producing a few pounds for
special purposes of apparel, from which
the seed were picked out by the finger,
the only means then known for sepa-
rating the lint. and one pound OF lint
a day was a mans task to pick. But
most of this work was done at night,
during the winter, and constituted the
greater part of the labor of the family
for the long winter evenings. Regu-
larry, when we came in at night, there
was the pile of cotton before the fire
out easy. Each of the grown mes had
his four ounces to pick, and we little
ones had to fill our shoe, as that would
proportion our work according to size
and although not a large one, | have
sometimes felt, when trying to fill
mine, that it was big enough for the
woman to live in that had so many
children she didn't know what to do.
Think OF this, and rejoice with me
when next you stand by your gin and
see that little machine doing the work
Of five Thousand mon
With no shoe to fill, no eyelid weary,
No little fingers sore, and toys on IN
shelf;
That YOU are at liberty to go and play,
While this does all the work itself.
The cotton gin, a little buzzingthing
that a strong man can take upon his
back. gave to us the monopoly in the
raiment of the human family. next in
Importance to the food they ate and
we sent cotton goods to its native
country and sold them cheaper than
they could make them by hand. India
II the other cotton-grOwing regions
of the world relapsed into their nor
NAL condition of indigo, and rice;-
IlltlititCtuI III LOW IS SpI Ill updIiloIS
us as if by magic; and our ships of
commerce spread their sails upon every
sea.
Seventy-fve years ago a ship from
Charleston arrived at Liverpool with
about ten of our present bales of cot
ton on board as part of her cargo, and
was seized, on the ground that SO much
cotton could not be raised in the United
States. Yet there are men now living
who We're present at the transaction,
and have lived to see the ten bales
grow into half as many millions.
At the time of the seizure Of
the Charleston vessel, cotton was
known as an article of IN
in India and the East only and its
consumption was about one cent per
head of the human family. To-day it
is something less than a dollar, with a
steady increase in the uses to which it
is applied and those natives who
make the most liberal use of cottonare
in advance of their fellow-men in all
that pertains to a higher plane of capa-
city and power.
The fact of the cultivation of cotton in
the Southern States not being profitable
from large crops does not come from
the quantity produced, but from a
higher rate of manual labor in compe-
tition with the cheaper labor of Asiatic
and African countries.
We have the climate, soil. means of
transportation, and the intelligence
which is more than a match for the
world, within ourselves and when
we have supplanted the field-hand
with machinery. that can do a hum
dred times the work for one-tenth of
its present cost, with the asset of the
machine to our credit, we will have
re-asserted supremacy that we lost
during the war, and that we may never
hope to regain 500 by the means Of
machinery.
In our latitude it takes ninety DAYS
for the cultivation of a crop of cotton.
We keep apace with its growth toler-
ably well with our present implements
and machines, and can cultivate three
times the amount that it was possible
to get picked out. This part of the
work of production is left entirely TO
fingers of the human hand. and it
takes ninety days to harvest it. In
other words, man does not gather
it up by hand any faStar tho, -
grows the same number of hours
work is needed to pick it out
that was used in its cultivation.
and that, too. the most tedious and
tlresome of all the crop. There is
neither strength, nor skill. nor amuse-
ment IN cotton picking. Beings with
intelligence and capacity to think can
not, and ariH not, do it. To them if i
a M 1Ch ~, ~ 49,