Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-03-23
KING COTTON.
GREAT VALUE or REFUSE MAT
TER-FURTHER UTILIZATION
or the Linty Plant for Many Important
Use-KarreIs, Car Wheels. Floor
Cloth and Roofing Felt


Cultivators of cotton now feeling so
greatly depressed over the unprecedented
low price they have this season been able
TO obtain for their crop should not harDor
too decided notions about abandoning its
cultivation, in the face of many hitherto IN
known, or only partially adopted uses, TO
which this most important OF Southern
crops has hitherto been mostly put
The fact really is that the cotton plant
bears 4 very striking resemblance in many
of its chief characteristics 70 the date palm,
supplying, like it. fisre. food, oil and fuel TO
appreciative planters.
The farmer and technologist are now
only beginning to learn the many uses to
which cotton, intelhgently and scientif-
cally manipulated, may be applied, beyond
the more common one OF textile manufae-
ture-the constantly growing demand for
and consumption of the oil obtained by
crushing its seed for culinary and manu-
featuring purposes, and its now univer-
sally recognized value as . nutriment for
cattle, and the cake resultant from its COM
preston being the chief ones
Quite recently II has been found as the
result of some tentative tests that even the
hullS and lint are of great value, and when
chemically treated are capable of yielding
non-porous and waterproof material that
can be worked into all sorts OF shapes anu
formsSnot the least useful being vessels
able to contain without leakage or constant
cooperage, such penetrating fluids as coal
oil and alcohol
Indeed, in view of the alarming rapidity
with which the supply of oak timber, for
barrel slaves, is administering, with not much
prospect of any proximate increase in the
supply of this indispensable wood for the
purposes named, the successful introduction
of the new material is most important
Besides this new use, it will also be APP
Piled to the manufacture of railway ties
perfectly mdestructible by climatic infu-
ences, and for car wheels, floor cloth, wall
Innings and roofing felt, while as filler,
the refuse lint treated under new process
makes a soft filing for bedticks, bed
spreads, pillows and winter petticoats,
equal to the almost impalpable and costly
swansdown.
Fort Worth's unequaled position as a
railroad center viii make her the pioneer
point for the establishment of this new in
dustry, while the question of fuel cost will
be speedily and very satisfactorily solved
by the introduction of crude petroleum
from the fields in relatively close proximity
TO her users of fuel for steam generating
purposes.
Mr.. Charles T. Scheuber says that if bar
rels could be made in Fort Worth on
parity of cost with oak, a considerable bust
hess could be worked up at this point, it
being central, aud distribution would be
more regular to cask users, who are Otter
put to great inconvenience by delay in re-
ceipt of the smaller sizes, which are mostly
obtained in St. Louis.
The new material is being tried at
Bremerhaven, Germany, and also at Dunn
barton on the Clyde, Scotland, FOR making
barrels, and while no saving in cost has yet
been secured over wood, the beauty of
finish, elegance and ightness will make it
favorite.
The question of weight is of course an
important one, when freight has to be
added. An ordinary 50-gallon barrel made
of oak weighs about seventy pounds; one
made from cotton refuse will not exceed
fortY-eight