The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1892-01-13
BILL ARP.

I was Illuminating about the farmer end
the low price Of cotton.
We nave been watching with intense inter-
est the advancement Of The cotton.
felt satisfied that the Cunningham machine
was a success, for it had picked 300 acres for
JEFF Welborn in Texas at a cost of less than
50 a bale.
Iher the Mason c~otton-picker was in Au-
gusta at the exposition and picked cotton In
the field and was pronounced q success.
saw the Mason machine several years
ago and believed it could be made a success.
There Is no similarity in the two machines.
The Mason actually picks the open cotton
and leaves the maturing bolls harmless. 1t
ia emphatically a picker-a substitute for hui
man fingers. But the Cunningham machine
Is simply q harvester aud axes 4 clean
sweep Of everything on the stalk-stripping
it of bolls and leaves and turning it all over
to another machine that extracts the cotton
and discards the trash. Hence the cotton
must be pretty well open before the machine
is put to work upon it. Hence the cotton
must be of q variety that most al Of it ma
lures at once. And hence, as "Roderic Dhu"
says, it mnst be JEFF Welborn's "Pet" and
hence the Texas farmers NUT buy their seed
from jeff, q seed that Roderick says has been
discarded by Texans as a fraud under var.
ious names as thu Chatham land 1t cheated
,ex, and the Dixon and the Cluster and now
Welborn's Pet.
"Roderic Dhu" %pronounces the Cunning
ham machine "practically worthless" while
others who saw It in operation declare it a
success and say that the universal exclama-
ton of the farmers who followed 1t was
farewell, darby; goodby, fingers" And SO
we are hearing both sides now. Dick
Naylor seems to be the champion Of the
Cunningham machine, and admits that q
change in the variety Of cotton will have to
be made. He declares the "Petn to be the
very cotton for the harvester. as 1t all opens
at once and Is comparatively storm proof,
hollis open. But Roderic Dhu eays the Pet
will not stand a drought and is the home OF
the bollworm, and the rank stocks fall down
with Their. top-heavy load and lie upon the
ground.
And so we will let the fight go on-we will
watch and wait. But MI. Cunningham new
or invented his mach ne to please JEFF Wei.
born. Whether any machine 10 wanted or
not Is the question-wanted by the toilers I
thing cheap. The consumers do, and the
producers want everything cheap that they
do not produce. But it is a distressing thing
to hear the poor crying for work. had
some tenants. on my farm and their children
picked the cott,n. A great planter like
Richardson, or JEFF Welborn, knows exactly
what their cotton costs them to make 1t, but
a poor tenant does not. ], have seen Row
lands wife and children In the field before I
got my breakfast. They chopped the cotton
and they picked it, and Rowland could sell
at 2 cents a pound and be thankful. II he
got more he was the more thankful-that was
all. What is the machine to do for Row
land' Machinery is a good thing, I know,
but they are hard on the laboring man who
can't buy them. The whole thing is a prob.
lem to me. The rich seem to be getting
richer, and the poor poorer. Thers was q
time when there was a wagon shop, and a
blacksmith shop, and a hatter's shop, and a
shoe shop, and a chair shop at every cross
r,ads and little mills and tanyarda all about,
and the people were happy and had plenty
of work to do, but machinery has run them
all of. They couldn't compete. That help
ed me, but it was hard on the humble work
man who made his living there. 1t 10 a pitt.
full, plaintire cry to hear anybody begging
for work.
s....".