The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-11-10

Jimbo,' he calls, tossing that coveted
treasure to the uplifted hands held
out to catch it, And here's de calico
for your red body, Kissmunk. l give
thirty cents for four yards
Kissmunk peers into the gaping
paper blissfully, and runs away with
it to the kitchen, while sling-shots.
fish hooks, felt hats, and pieces of gay
colored ribbon are distributed to their
various owners.
Il fetch dis fur de crowd" exclaims
the burly driver, leaping down from
his perch, and he scatters striped mint
candy among his dusky constituents,
and turns away to take out his mules,
the happier for having made so many
small folks happy.
Weighing Their Bags.
When the pickers come in out of the
fields at sunset to have their days pick
ing weighed, things have to hustle"
as the Weigher expresses it: that is. SO
far as the men and women are con-
cerned who are anxious to get off home
The children sit content on the plat
form of the cotton house, swing their
feet, crunch sugar cane and speculate
as to how many pounds they have
picked or might, could, would or should
pick under different circumstances.
pounds cen there?" they shout to a lit
tie midget of boy who struggles up
with his days gleanings balanced on
his head, tin bucket on his arm, and
tiny fodder of two years trudging
manfully at his heels.
Maybe it's pushin' it close, this
small pickers answers, and depositing
his cotton or the platform he lifts the
baby brother to seat along with the
bility Immediately challenges a boy to
"wrastle' with him while they are
waiting for their money.
Suited to Children.
The cotton picking business is one
enterprise in which big and little, young
and old, have an equal chance Fifty
or sixty cents is paid for each hundred
pounds whether it be picked by small
or big fingers. The cotton plant seldom
grows tall. Big people have to bend
their backs to gather the lower balls
Little people are on level with them,
or perhaps have TIC reach up little to
the highest tufts. In cotton picking,
strength does not count but nimbleness
does, so the small folks have the best
chance.
Where the people are poor the money
earned by the children in contemplating
has TO go to the household fund, but en-
ergetic Titles ones work on half holidays,
or during noon time, or on moonlight
nights and makes extra money enough
/ to purchase some long-wished for object.
It takes hours of unceasing industry
in a field or patch of cotton where the
balls are thickly opened, to gather a
hundred pounds. A hundred pounds is
regarded as a good days work for an
adult person. Isolated instances are
known where men and women have
picked daily 300 pounds but they are ex-
ceptionally expert and the field in which
they are picking must be unusually we'll
opened. Two hundred pounds day is
as much as any wideawahe boy or girl
can reasonably hope to accomplish.
Diving in Cotton.
Riding to the gin house on top. of a
Wagonload of newly gathered cotton is
great fun for the youngsters. The wagon
| has scarcely drawn up in front of the
gin house before every boy passenger has
made a bee line for the lint room, there
| to dive and romp and tumble to his
hearts content.
The lint room is the big, barn-like apart
ment at the back of the gins, which
! holds the accumulated cotton tumbled
| out fresh from the little grinding Jaws
lint room has no windows and as one
! looks through the wide door into the
| darkened interior it looks like nothing
so much as a big snow storm, a swirline
mass of white reaching up even to the
| rafterS.
To get a foothold on those rafters an6
! jump headlong down into the yielding
mass below is ecstasy, and again and
pearing from view in one corner of the
| room only to bob up unexpectedly il
another. Finally, exhausted and out OF
| breath, they emerge into the outer air
Veritable snow men, every one of them