nd eradication than has yet been made.

Despite the ravage of insects and diseases, when a well-tended field of
cotton is ripening, one would think from the number of bolls per plant,
that the owner's fortune was surely made. Unfortunately, the plants shed
bolls as well as buds and flowers, in great numbers. It has frequently
been noted that even well-fertilized plants upon good, carefully
cultivated soil, will mature only fifteen to twenty per cent. of the
bolls produced.

[Illustration: _Cotton blossoms and bolls at various stages of growth_]

The planter will tell you that he would be willing to stand the boll
weevil, the dropped bolls, the extra cultivations, and all the remainder
of it, if he could only be sure that cotton which did mature would be
picked when it should be picked, and picked with rapidity and care.
Picking is the most laborious, as it is the most picturesque operation on
the plantation. Many types of machine pickers have been introduced, but
there are few planters who will admit that any of them suits his
particular needs. Now, as a hundred years ago, the picking is done by
hand. It is a simple operation, so simple that children ten years old can
do it, and women excel in it. But the best pickers rarely average more
than a hundred pounds a day, and most of them pull much less. Careless
work plays its part, too, for cotton is easily dropped from the boll and
soiled or lost altogether. Leaves and twigs as well as the shell of the
boll frequently cling to the fiber, and are picked with it, and all these
things tend to dirty and discolor it, and lessen its marketability. It
requires about three pounds of cotton with the seed in it, as picked, to
produce one pound of ginned or lint cotton.

There were in the United States, in 1917, a total of 24,272 ginneries, of
which 3,921 were idle. Each active gin produced an average of 526 bales
running bales of cotton. The number of gins shows a tendency to decrease
every year, not rapidly, but surely, and this despite the opposite
tendency of the crop. The Whitney gin of the old days has been improved
beyond the dreams of its inventor. He boasted that one man could do as
much with his machine as ten men without it. Today's gin averages about
five bales a day--a quantity which the negro of old would find difficult
to turn out in a year.

To the gin then, which is located either on the plantation or in the
immediate neighborhood, the mule drawn wagons, driven b