The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-19

1 than 50 or 70 pounds could be carried ! on the long journey of 800 miles up l from the seacoast In this hydraulic press there is one cylinder which
 weighs two and one-half tons, and it almost broke down the boat by which | 1t was carried across Lake Victoria.
 The nearest landing place on that lake
 is several miles from KampaIa, and l the cylinder was dragged inland by a | traction engine.
 l This same company has recently pur- | chased a location under Ripon falls, at i the head of Napoleon gulf, where the | Nile flows out of Lake Victoria. The
 falls are such that they will furnish ! a big electric power, and 1t is tn e
 intention to build ginning mills and | cotton factories there which will be
 run by the Nile at it's source.
 A Modern Cotton Gin In Africa. While l was in Omdurman, in the Anglo.
 Egyptian Sudan, which lies on the Nile
 fifteen hundred miles or so north of here | saw half-naked negro women sitting flat
 on the ground taking the seeds out of the
 cotton with little gins run by hand. The l gins were like clothes wringers The lint passed through rolls not bigger around ! than broomstick and the work went or i as slowly in the United States before
 Eli Whitney invented his gin. The gin I ming establishment here has as up-to-datt machinery as any in our southern states | It is a building of sun-dried brick, cover | ing perhaps one-eighth of an acre. It is | of two stories. and the gins are on the
 second floor, so arranged that the cottor | can be wheeled in and the lint dropped 1 down below.
 1 Right near the ginning rooms are the | warehouses. These are now five in num- i Der. They are 75 feet long and 30 feet 1 wide, and have on hand about 2,0OO,00 l pounds of seed cotton ready for ginning | All this has come in within the past lew l months, and the cotton is now arriving
 by the hundreds of bags every day. All Brought In On the Head. | While at the factory l saw scores oi
 natives trotting along with great bags oi | cotton on their heads, and wherever l go
 I pass men bringing in cotton. The stuff | is still in the seed. It Is put up In banana | bank and bound over and over with ba- 1 mana fibers so that it cannot fall out dur i ing the carrying. Each bale weighs about
 70 pounds. and this is good load for a I native The men who bring it in are i usually dressed in bark cloth, but some | of these wear -Americani, or American ! cotton sheeting, which is popular here In 1 Uganda.
 l A,nen the cotton arrives at the ware | houses it is weighed and the man is paid 1 in rupees, or in strings of cowry shells l about 2 cents a pound. This amount of i ? cents constitutes his reward for plant l ing and harvesting the crop, in addition ] to bringing it for miles on his head to l the factory. I am told the pay is con 1 sidered small even among the natives, ! who work for wages as low as dollar a month. and that there will have to be a raise in the price, or but little more will | bn planted. It is also whispered that the | ctiefs are getting a rake-off from the | Uganda Company. Limited. and that for l this reason they are enforcing the natives 1, to SOW cotton. So far the people have but | little idea of intensive cultivation of any kind, and the cotton grown is the result of nature rather than work.
 Just outside these warehouses I took a snap shot at a score or so of natives who had just sold their cotton. Each had lot of cowry shells in his hands. and they were chatting and planning what they would buy with their money at the Hindoo stores of Kampala.
 Cotton Planting Growing.
 am told that as soon as the price is increased the number of natives planting cotton will rapidly grow. The amount sold last year was five or six times that of the year before. and F times as much was raised in 1905 as in 1904 All the cotton so far grown is from American
 seed. the wild cotton having a coarse
 fibre with many large seeds in each bos.
 Egyptian cotton is now being tried but
 so far 1t has not proved to be as suit
 able to this climate and soil as the Amer ican upland. The government itself is