In the days of which I write
horse-power was preferred to steam, and negro-power to both; and few
planters of the fine black-seed cotton could be convinced that any
"power-gin" could be invented which would not injure the long, silky
"staple" or fibre of the lint. The old-time "foot-gins" were used
exclusively, and the gin-house was a place of curious interest to all
visitors. In one end of the long room was the huge pile of seed-cotton
which was to pass through the rollers as the first step toward
its preparation for the market. How simply does a sudden stroke of
inventive genius solve a problem which wise men have regarded as
insoluble! Not much more than a century ago a commission of practical
English _savans_ discouraged the cultivation of a textile fabric
which "might be useful but for the impossibility of clearing it of the
seeds!" But the foot-gin appeared on the scene, and indigo went down
before cotton. Ranged along the walls of the room are some twenty
rough wooden frames, looking like a compromise between a straw-cutter
and a sewing-machine, each furnished with two strong rollers operated
by a treadle and acting precisely like those of a clothes-wringer.
Behind each of these machines stands a man or woman with one
ever-moving foot upon the treadle-board, feeding the seed-cotton from
a large bag to the greedy rollers, which seize it and pass the lint
in fleecy rolls into another bag prepared for it, while the seed, like
shirt-buttons touched by the afore-mentioned wringer, rolls off from
the hither side to form a pile upon the floor. Thence it will be
carted to the seed-house to be rotted into manure for the next crop,
there being no better fertilizer for cotton than a compost of which
it forms the base. A portion of it, however, will be reserved to
be boiled with cow-peas and fed to the milch-cattle, no food being
superior to its rich, oily kernel in milk-producing qualities. The
negro mothers use it largely in decoction as a substitute for cocoa,
and the white mothers under similar circumstances having it parched
and ground like coffee, when it makes an exceedingly palatable and
nutritious beverage. The "green-seed" or short-staple variety is far
inferior to the black for this purpose, and produces white, sticky,
cottony-looking butter; indeed, most dairywomen insist that "you
can pick the lint out of it." The ginned cotton is carried to the
platforms, where it is "specked" by the women--leaves, dirt and othe