Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1909-07-02
The Use of Cotton Bagging
By Harvie Jordan

Since the days of the Farmers Alliance
when such a heroic effort was made to
displace jute bagging with the use of
cotton bagging, southern farmers have
prayed that the time might yet come
when cotton bales could be satisfactorily
and economically covered with cotton
cloth. Seventeen years have passed since
the legions of the Farmers Alliance wag
ed war with the jute trust. were defeated
and had to surrender again to the power
full control of the jute bagging monopoly.
In looking back over the difficulties with
which the cotton growers had to contend
in that memorable contest to ascertain
the weak points in the armor of the
farmers which led to their defeat, ii is
now openly admitted that the trouble
was with the bale and the arbitrary tare
assessed against its covering. which gave
the victory to the jute trust. The contin-
ued use of the large, cumbersome planta-
ton bale which must necessarily be
roughly handled with hooks in transit
from the ginnery to the spinner and the
deduction by the cotton trade of 6 per
cent or 80 pounds from the gross weight
of the bales for tare, has made 1t prac-
tically and economically impossible for
the farmers to use bagging which could
not stand rough usage and was heavy in
weight.
GIN COMPRESSION SOLVES PROB
LEM
with the introduction and adoption of
/ local gin compression, which within the
| last year or two has been rendered prac-
| ticable through the invention of modern
machinery, the use of cotton bagging as
covePing for the new style bales will
be mace not only possible but preferable
by botli growers and spinners. In addi-
ton to this, the Liverpool and Manches-
| ter Cotton associations have recently
| passed resolutions lifting the embargo
! of the arbitrary six per cent deduction for
! tare, in so far as it relates to gin COM
pressed cotton, and have agreed to buy
all such cotton by actual net weight.
The New England spinners have not
only agreed to the action of the foreign
associations, but will pay an extra prem
/ ium to the farmers for gin compressed
bales in order to offer additional induce
ments to reform the present primitive
and wasteful methods of baling and
handling American cotton. The twentieth
century new style bale, which is now
being compressed at many gin plants in
| the south, is a neat 5O0-pound bale of
cotton, of the square type, carrying a
density of 80 pounds to the cubic foot,
about one-third the size OF the ordinary
plantation bale, and which will load a
car to it's carrying capacity at the initial
point of shipment, to be billed direct tc
/ the manufacturer without loss of time or
| decomposition in transit.
REBATE ON COTTON BAGGING.
All domestic and foreign spinners are
unanimous in their objections to the use
of jute bagging as a covering for Amer
| lean cotton. No other cotton in the world
is covered with jute bagging except the
| cotton raised in this country. Jute bag
| ging is not only heavy In weight, makes
the tare and freight on same unneces-
sarily high and expensive to the growers,
but in taking such bagging off the bales
| at the mills a considerable amount of the
/ lint is detached from the bales, which Is
either lost entirely or sold as waste at
two cents per pound. In addition to this
/ the lutte fibre mixes with the lint fibre and
causes no end of trouble and material
losses to the spinners of fine yarns. 1t Is
now admitted by spinners generally that
cotton bagging can be taken off the
bales at the mills without any loss OF
lint; that the bagging can be decorticated
with modern machinery now in use at tho
| mills. reconverted into lint and woven
| back into yarns and cloth. This would
| give an additional value to cotton bag
| ging which would enable the spinners To
| pay a rebate to the farmers for using
| cotton bagging and thereby greatly re-
duce the cost of bagging to the cotton
growers. A satisfactory bagging can be