The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1893-04-20
About Cotton Picking Machines.

In the New York World of last Sunday
there was a broadside advertisement OF
the formation of q stock company to
float a new contemplating machine.
They seem to wish to sell stock, and,
probably later on, the stockholders.
What has become of the Smith cotton
picker! There was one invented by Mr..
Orrin Smith, OF Wake county, | believe,
and proved u practical success. Persons
who saw the trial in the field report
that it worked well, but we have not
heard of it in years. What has become
of the invention? II.
EDITOR STATE CHRONICLE:
Dear Sir:-In your issue OF February
Sth there appeared an inquiry about the
Orrin Smith Cotton Picker on exhibition
and trial in the middle part of this State
some years ago, to which beg to reply.
The machine proved a practicable sue
cess and did more and better work than
all the combined efforts at cotton picking
machinery to date, and have it yet in
tact with all the experience and improve
ments of myself and others in that line.
But did not have money enough to put
it on the market in proper form, and was
opposed by prominent citizens and the
agricultural department as detrimental
to the production of cotton in this State,
where the gauge of the crop was the
| amount that could be picked out. For
said they: "Arkansas and some of the
| other States can produce five times as
| much cotton as we can here in North
Carolina. But we can pick out by hand
| as much here as they can, and with that
machine of yours we could not compete
with them and it would drive the cult
walton of cotton out of the State With
this sentiment and OutspOken apprecia-
ton against me, and unable to go further,
had to put it to sleep until such times
as could bring it out, and our citizens
should wake up from their Rip Van
Wrinkle slumber to find an hundred at
tempts all over the land striving for the
mastery of the very thing had SO well
demonstrated and if did not carry it
forward somebody else wOuld-and all
the profits thereof. For it is an mex
Orable demand and must come. 1t is a
simple question of machinery of America
versus the pauper labor of the world.
| am now at work upon an improved
machine with advanced devices that
covers all the ground, that answers the
purposes and fills the requirements of
cotton picker. am the first man that
ever delivered bale of cotton upon the
human fingers, and | can enable every
cotton planter of the South to do the
same thing for nominal cost. But /
| have to go slow, as | am not dealing
| in "salted stock speculatiOns,' but in
| machines that the planter can own and
work at pleasure, costing about half as
| much as the estimated cost of these con-
, Germs of Colonel Sellers, with millions in
| it, all on piece of paper.
Here is a machine costing about 5000
| each, gathering all the cotton that is
| well opened and ready for picking that
| you can drive over in day at plOw-horse
| gait, without destruction to the growing
staple, and you can go over the field
| once, twice or three times, at different
seasons, as the lint natures.
In January last I examined two model
machines in New York city, so called
cotton pickers with a capital OF five mil
| lions OfdOllars to manufacture and rent"
the machines. They would sell nothing
| but certificates of stock in the company.
But the machine proved on eXamina ton
to be a " tbresher,' knocking the whole
| plant into one mass of green and open
cotton, stalks, bolls, leaves, grass
and weeds-all together. | told them
they might make bricks with that
illdCulue, DuI u NOulu never PICK COtUOu.
This was the Blum machine of which so
much has been said through the press of
| it's efficiency and success, and for which
the company paid for an advertisement
in the New York papers Zone insertion)
| two thousand dollars.
Then there was the Lispenard machine,
with ten millions capital, and a nve
thousand dollar advertisement in the
New York Sunday World, which was moth
ing but a little wheel barrow concern
that was no more adapted to picking
cotton than it was to catching fish, |
make the statement of these facts to
show the Importance of a cotton har-
vester that our citizens in North Carolina
have so strenuously opposed.
L had my experimental machine in
Raleigh and drove up to the Marlboro
house and made proclamation that all
who wanted to see the machine pick
cotton come with me to a lot near the
national cemetery and see it work, and
not one single soul would go. | will
refer you to DR.. &. W. Blacknall who
was keeping the hotel at the time for
confirmation of this deplorable fact.
But it is not many years hence when the
cotton will be gatherered by machinery
for about one dollar bale, whether it is
made here in North Carolina or not
Henderson, y. {. o, r. SMITH