children, as well as men; but it is tedious
and requires care. The picking season will average 100 days. It is
difficult to get the hands to work until the cotton is fully opened, and
it is hard to induce them to pick over 100 lb. a day, though some
expert hands are found in every cotton plantation who can pick twice as
much. The loss resulting from careless work is very serious. The cotton
falls out easily or is dropped. The careless gathering of dead leaves
and twigs, and the soiling of the cotton by earth or by the natural
colouring matter from the bolls, injure the quality. It has been
commonly thought that the production of cotton in the south is limited
by the amount that can be picked, but this limit is evidently very
remote. The negro population of the towns and villages of the cotton
country is usually available for a considerable share in cotton-picking.
There is in the cotton states a rural population of over 7,000,000, more
or less occupied in cotton-growing, and capable, at the low average of
100 lb. a day, of picking daily nearly 500,000 bales. It is evident,
therefore, that if this number could work through the whole season of
100 days, they could pick three or four times as much cotton as the
largest crop ever made. Great efforts have been made to devise
cotton-picking machines, but, as yet, complete success has not been
attained. Lowne's machine is useful in specially wide-planted fields and
when the ground is sufficiently hard.

_Cotton Ginning._--The crop having been picked, it has to be prepared
for purpose of manufacture. This comprises separating the fibre or lint
from the seeds, the operation being known as "ginning." When this has
been accomplished the weight of the crop is reduced to about one-third,
each 100 lb. of seed cotton as picked yielding after ginning some 33
lb of lint and 66 lb. of cotton seed. The actual amounts differ with
different varieties, conditions of cultivation, methods of ginning, &c.;
a recent estimate in the United States gives 35% of lint for Upland
cotton and 25% for Sea Island cotton as more accurate.

The separation of lint from seed is accomplished in various ways. The
most primitive is hand-picking, the fibre being laboriously pulled from
off each seed, as still practised in parts of Africa. In modern
commercial cotton production ginning machines are always used. Very
simple machines are used in some parts of Africa. The simplest cotton
gin in extensive use is the