Evening star., 1896-11-14
can only be used for very common cloth,
and our cotton will always be in demand
in Asia to mix with these poorer varieties.


In ASIA TO mix with tneSe poorer VarletleS.
Cotton Used AS Wool.
There is a col siderable demand for for
eign cottons in the United States to be
mixed with wool, and thus sold as woolen
goods. We buy for this purpose quite
lot of Peruvian cotton, which is of more
woolly character than our cotton. The
Egyptian cotton goes into similar products
and many carpets, hats and clolhes which
are supposed to be all wool are practically
made of these cottons. Almost 75,OOO,UUo
pounds of cotton are used every year by
our wooden mills and woolen hat fac
tories annually take about 400 bales.
Where Cotton is King.
The United States Will, it is believed, al
ways control the cotton trade of the world.
We could make now m-re than the world s
supply, and could l am told, easily run
other countries out OF the markets had
the south a different system of farming.
The lands I have Travelled through are no
where haif farmeu. The cotton patches are
generally small, and here in Georgia much
of the farming is done on the shares. The
lands are often owned by men who live in
the cities, and advance supplies to the ne
groes, who put in thirty or forty acres
and who expect to pay their debts out of
their share of the years yield. Most of
the farmers until lately have raised moth
ing but cotton and would rely upon the
money they got from this to pay for their
pork, sugar and feed for their stock. They
could raise as good corn and oats as the
northern states, and the grazing poSSi-
biiues OF tae uplands of tie southern
states surpass the best of the northern
land This is already changing, and IN
the not distant future the south will raise
all of its own supplies, and will use it's
cotton as a money crop pure and simple,
which will make the southern farmers
richer than the same class anywhere else
in the world. With the other cotton-pro-
ducing countries trying to increase their
yield it would seem to be a mistake to
limit the growth of cotton here in order
to raise the price. With diversified farm
ing the south can raise better and cheaper
cotton than any other country, and we
ought to run the other countries out OF
the busiress. 1t costs, it is said, over
cents a pound to produce Egyptian cotton,
as the lands are taxed 50 per acre and
upward, and the cotton fields of China and
Japan and India yield comparatively little
to the acre, and that only OF the very poor
est variety.
In Cotton Fields.
But how is cotton raised?
Col. r. r. Murdoch, an Atlanta bank
er and cotton dealer, who has handled cot
ton for more than a generation, tells me
that it requires but little intelligence, and
that the average negro can produce almost
as good a crop the most scientific white
man. The ground is ploughed and har-
rowed in March, and the burrows thrown
up so as to make rows of hills about three
or four feet apart. In April the cotton
seed, little black seeds about the size of
lemon seed, are drilled in. A few days
later the green sprouts come through the
soil The rows are hilled up rs the plants
grow, and the weeds are kept down. The
cotton plants are thinned out from time
to time. and about the last of July the
work Of cultivation is done. BY the mid
die of June the plants begin TO blossom,
nelGS gardens nf
shal Neil roses AS the blossoms drop off
the Doiis OF cotton appear. They grow to
about the size of black walnut, when
they crack open and the beautiful White
cotton shows out. The crop is such that
1t will keep d long time. 1t does not ripen
all at once, and the pickers go over the
fields half d dozen times during the sea-
son OF gathering the cotton, which begins
in the far south and Texas in July, and
which lasts until late in the fall. In
Georgia and North and South Carolina
some cotton is Still being gathered at
Christmas.
What Cotton Picking Costs.
The picking of the cotton is an expensive
item. The gathering of the crop of 1894
cost, it is estimated. about 500, ,0Oo, 900 The
pickers are usually negroes, who are paid
SO much for each hundred pounds of cotton
as it is taken from the pods or bolls. Here
in Georgia pickers get about thirty-five
south as high as fifty cents and upward a
hundred.
In Texas a crop of 1850 bales averaged a
cost for picking of 81 a bale 1 am told
there are faster pickers now than in slave
times. Then 100 pounds a day was con-
sidered remarkable work. Not long ago
ten convicts of the Mississippi penitentiary
picked $4,000 pounds in five and half
days, an average of 353 pounds daily per
man.
AS 10 the ordinary labor, it is hard to get
negro to pick more than 100 pounds a
day, and when ne has done that he wants
to stop. Now and tncn the pickers strike,
but it is more often account of bad
weather than n difference about prices.
The women and children, as well as the
men, go out into the fields to pick, and for
the time the land is alive with black gangs
moving through the white fields, who are
pulling out the cotton and putting it into
bags strapped on their shoulders. When a
bag is full the cotton is emptied into a
large basket, from which it is thrown
into the wagons which are to carry it to
the SIN. Not pound of cotton can be
sold before it is g.nned. This process is
necessary to get the seed out of the cotton
The lint is wrapped around the seed So
tightly that it would take days to separate
by hand what machinery will do in few
moments. Some large planters have gins
OF their own. Other gins are worked on
shares. Every locality has gins near it,
and within few miles of the cotton field
l have visited a number of these cotton
gins. The lint is sawed from the seed by
circular saws, so graded that the seeds
will just pass through them. Further on
in the machine there are brushes which pull
the Int from the saws and which will roll
it out in beautiful f1eecy sheet of what
looks like cotton batting, that it drops
on the floor in a mountain of white 1t is
now ready to be squeezed by machinery
into the great bales for the market Each
bale as 1t comes from the gin is of about
the size of a big dry goods box. 1t is about
tour feet square and about five feet in
length. 1t is wrapped with rough clot1l,
much like coffee sa cking, and is bound with
bands of hoop iron. Such a bale weighs
from $50 to 800 pounds, and is now worth
from $50 to $40 as it stands on the scales
of the shipper. FRANK G. CARPENTER.