Cotton

the fibre which surrounds the seed of several species of the cotton plant. Cotton grows on a bushy herb two or three feet high. It is contained in a three-to five-celled pod which bursts open when ripe. The open pod is called a boll. The cotton fiber is intended by nature to enable the wind to carry and scatter the seeds as it does those of the milkweed, cottonwood, and dandelion; but man has discovered that the soft fiber may be twisted into thread, and the thread woven into cloth. Cotton is the great cloth plant of the world. The crowded population of Japan, China, India, Egypt, and the inhabitants of all warm countries-half to four-fifths of the human race-wear cotton clothes the year round. The peasants of the countries named never wear anything else. The use of clothing, and particularly of cotton clothing, is increasing rapidly. There is little danger, therefore, of raising too much cotton. If the entire world were civilized and able to dress properly, the cotton looms would require 42,000,000 bales a year.

Cotton cloth appears to have been made and worn before the dawn of history in three centers,--India, Northern Africa, and Central America. Columbus found Indians wearing cotton cloth, and Cortez found the Mexican Indians proficient in weaving a native cloth. Europe got its first cotton cloth from India, by way of the caravan trade. Calico is the Calicut cloth of India; muslin, the Moosoul cloth of Mesopotamia; cambric is the cloth of Cambrai, a town in France where it was first made from cotton brought from India. Europe appears to have taken an interest in cotton weaving shortly after the discovery of America. At first people, accustomed to linen and woolen goods, thought cotton good enough for a royal wedding dress.

Cotton was known in our southern colonies from the earliest times, but merely as a dooryard plant-an ornamental flowering herb. In 1739 a bag of cotton was sent to England from Savannah. In 1784, at the close of the Revolutionary War, eight bags of American cotton were seized at Liverpool on a suspicion that the colonies could not have produced so much. About this date cotton growing began in the United States in earnest, and ten years later Charleston had 1,000,000 pounds to sell. The industry went on slowly at first, because the cotton had to be pulled from the seed by hand. In 1793 an inventive Massachusetts Yankee, by the name of Eli Whitney, resident in Georgia, devised a cotton gin. It consists of a hopper into which the bolls are poured. One side of the hopper is composed of parallel wires, between which circular saws, fixed on a swiftly revolving roller, turn with rapidity and whip the fiber through the slits, while the seeds, too large to follow, rattle down to the bottom of the hopper and out into a pile by themselves. This device, which, by the way, brought Mr. Whitney no end of lawsuits and little profit, enabled planters to prepare large quantities of cotton for market. In 1791 we sold England 189,000 pounds; in 1803 we sold her 41,000,000 pounds; in 1810 our exports were 94,000,000 pounds; in 1820 we sold 128,000,000 pounds; in 1830 we had 271,000,000 pounds to spare, and so on up to 1860, when the American production of cotton had reached the astonishing figure of 1,462,500,000 pounds or 4,685,000 bales of 300 pounds each. The cotton crop began to bring in so much money that Senator Hammond declared on the floor of the Senate, 1858, "Cotton is king."

In 1790 the first successful American cotton mill-a factory for spinning and weaving cotton-was established in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. English invention (see articles on HARGREAVES and ARKWRIGHT) had built up a great cotton-weaving industry in that country. America had but to import English machinery and begin work. Four years later a second mill was erected. By 1810 there were 102 mills and 31,000 spindles; twenty years later, there were 795 mills with 1,250,000 spindles, or 33,000 looms. When the Civil War came we had 1,000 mills, employing 100,000 people, and consuming 420,000,000 pounds of cotton a year.

The fertility of the soil, cheap slave labor, and the use of the cotton gin, enabled America to raise most of the cotton needed in the world's markets. Our Atlantic States, from Virginia southward, all the Gulf States, and Tennessee, engaged in raising cotton. During the Civil War it was difficult for Northern mills to get cotton. Prices rose till calico sold for twenty-five cents per yard. On account of the blockade, or guarding of the Southern ports by Federal ships, England could scarcely get shipments at all; and the so-called Cotton Famine in Great Britain followed. Other countries were not prepared to raise large amounts, and many English mills were obliged to close, throwing thousands and thousands of people out of work and causing great financial disasters. The high price of cotton, in time, stimulated greater production, particularly in Egypt and India. When the Civil War was over the cotton plantations of the South, with buildings burned, negroes gone, and foreign markets occupied by new growers, were simply ruined.

Of late the natural superiority of American cotton, the establishment of cotton mills near the cotton fields, and a system of cultivation by small renters rather than on the now impossible large plantations, have given American cotton and American cloth a new ascendancy. The United States now produces more cotton than ever. Our Southern states grow 10,000,000 bales a year, or eighty per cent of the world's cotton. The American cotton crop for 1905 was valued at $575,000,000. Europe now pays the United States $1,000,000 a day for cotton.

Cotton culture is not unlike that of corn or potatoes. Fields are plowed and fertilized and the seed is dropped in hills. Warm, steamy weather helps the young crop on rapidly. The planting begins frequently in February. It continues for about two months. During May and June the plants are cultivated. This work is done with a big, long-handled hoe, and is called "chopping cotton." The weeds are "chopped" out, and the rows thinned by cutting out the poorer plants. Then, for two months or more, there is no work in the cotton fields. In many cotton-growing regions in the South, this is the one time in the year when the children can be spared to attend school. Cotton raising need not impoverish the soil. The cotton fiber itself draws its elements from air and water. In selling a bale of cotton, a planter sells no part of his soil. If the stalks be returned to the soil and the cotton seed be fed to stock, a cotton farm should not run down.

During the latter part of September cotton picking begins. The bolls open gradually, and, as the cotton is picked from the open bolls only, the picking lasts a long time. The first light frosts hasten the opening of the bolls, and the bulk of the cotton is picked usually in October and November. The cotton is seldom all picked by Christmas time, and fields are seen as late as March still white with cotton. Usually a thrifty cotton grower gets his cotton picked before time to plant the next crop; but there is sufficient reason for the expression, "It takes thirteen months to raise a cotton crop." A good field hand can pick 200 pounds a day. A cotton picking machine has been introduced. It runs astride of a row. Two cylinders catch the cotton. In place of the grain elevators seen farther north, the railroad stations of the cotton-growing states are provided with cotton gins and cotton-baling machines. After ginning, cotton is compressed by machinery and bound by strap iron into bales weighing about 500 pounds. It is then ready for market. The cotton gin turns out about two-thirds seed and one-third fiber by weight. A bale of cotton and half a ton of cottonseed may be regarded as a fair yield per acre.

The seed, not unlike green coffee in appearance, was formerly thrown away as waste, but is now put through a heavy press. It yields a large amount of cotton-seed oil, and a refuse known as oil cake. Oil cake is fed to stock. Cottonseed oil is used for a great variety of purposes. It is the oil out of which cottolene, a substitute for lard, is made. About 4,500,000 tons of seed, formerly left to rot behind the gins, is now utilized.

Cotton fiber is ordinarily from one-half to two-thirds of an inch in length. A fiber is merely a hollow, flat, cellulose tube, with a spiral twist. An especially fine, soft cotton, called Sea Island cotton is produced on the islands off the coast of Georgia. The boll is small; the seeds are black. It has a fiber two inches long. This cotton cannot so far be made to grow with entire success on the mainland, or in other parts of the world. It commands a high price. It is said that a thousand mile thread has been spun from it so fine that it weighed but a pound.

Cotton raising is not without its difficulties. Insect pests are hard to overcome. There are three serious insect pests, the cotton-stainer, the cotton-worm, and the cotton boll-weevil. The cotton-stainer is the least annoying. It is a species of insect in some degree like a chinch-bug, but longer. The body of the adult is red, with pale brown wing covers, marked with yellowish stripes. The young have black legs and red bodies. They feed by sucking the juice of the stems and buds of the cotton plant, and are especially dreaded because they stain the cotton in the opening bolls. They are also accused of puncturing the rinds of oranges so that the fruit soon decays.

The cotton-worm is the caterpillar of a small, night-flying moth. The moth lives over winter in the shelter of old grass. It lays its eggs in early springtime on the cotton plant when it is only an inch or two high. The caterpillars are hairy, green fellows, with black dots. They travel with a looping gait, like the cutworm and the measuring worm. The first generation hatches out in March. As soon as the caterpillar has matured and turned into a moth, the second generation travels northward and lays eggs. The Texas cotton worm moth is thought in this way to give rise to seven successive generations in the same growing season. The caterpillars strip the plants of their leaves and render a crop out of the question.

The cotton boll-weevil is a small, gray-reddish-brown, snout beetle about a quarter of an inch in length. It has a long, strong beak. It feeds on the cotton plant and nothing else. The adult female punctures the young cotton boll and deposits an egg. The egg hatches into a grub, which works inside the boll until it is ready to come out. It leaves a hole behind it through which moisture enters and utterly ruins the cotton. The cotton bollweevil entered Texas from Mexico. It has been traveling northeastward at the rate of about seventy miles a year. The state of Texas offers a standing reward of $50,000 for a practical solution of the problem presented by this pest.

STATISTICS. The American cotton crop for 1908 was reported by the Census Bureau at 13,563,942 bales of 500 pounds each. The crop by states in running bales was as follows:

The following statistics are taken from Bulletin 97, Bureau of the Census, Supply and Distribution of Cotton, for the year ending August 31, 1908. The ruling weight of a bale is 500 pounds.

CONSUMPTION 1908.

The corresponding totals for the year 1900 were:

The leading states in the spinning of cotton in 1908 are:

SUPPLY. The nearly 19,000,000 bales consumed by the cotton mills of the world were supplied by the following countries:

American cotton is exported from almost every station from which railways leave for Canada. Thus Minnesota and North Dakota appear in the list of cotton exporting states. The chief ports of cotton export in 1908 were:

The countries to which cotton is sent, and the number of bales exported to each in 1907 are as follows:

AMERICAN COTTON IMPORTATION, 1908.

To the above must be added an importation (1908) of 69,000,000 pounds of Egyptian cotton. The Bulletin says:

There are four principal reasons for the extensive use of Egyptian cottons in the United States: (1) They are best adapted to mercerizing and other processes that give a high finish to cloth and cause it to resemble silk; (2) their exceptional clearness (freedom from map) and luster, as well as their capacity for taking dyes, fit them for mixing with silk and for filling sateen, India linens, and similar goods having a brilliant surface; (3) the brown color of Mit Afifi fiber allows it to be used without dyeing in manufacturing goods, such as Balbriggan underwear and lace curtains, in which the ecru shade is desired; (4) they can be used for the manufacture of sewing thread and other articles which need to be very strong and for which no other type of cotton but sea-island is suitable. Owing to the higher price of the latter, Egyptian cottons can in many cases be advantageously substituted.

Except in cases where the brown-colored fiber is especially desired there seems to be little reason for preferring Egyptian to sea-island cotton, although one manufacturer reports that, within the range of the numbers used, the former furnishes a cleaner and better looking filling than either sea-island or peeler (long-staple upland) cottons. The highest grades of sea-island have longer and finer fiber than any other cotton, and therefore make stronger and finer yarns and thread. For these grades the Egyptian can not be substituted, but in manufacturing various classes of goods the somewhat lower price of Egyptian cottons allows them to be used to advantage in place of the lower grades of sea-island, especially when the supply of the latter is below the normal.

Apart from specific qualities of the fiber, American manufacturers give other reasons for preferring Egyptian cotton. They state that it is usually more carefully ginned, graded, and baled, and is apt to be freer from trash and short fiber, hence giving less waste in carding and combing than either sea-island or long-staple upland cottons. Egyptian cotton is also esteemed for its evenness of staple, the different grades showing little variation in this respect from year to year.

Egyptian cotton culture in the United States.--The Egyptian varieties are apparently best adapted to culture under irrigation in regions where there is practically no rainfall during the growing season. The only part of the United States where these conditions exist and where at the same time the summers are long and hot enough for profitable cotton culture is the extreme Southwest, from western Texas to southern California.

Since this type of cotton will continue to produce bolls and ripen fiber until a hard frost occurs, it is obvious that the largest yields can be obtained in regions where the autumn temperatures are highest. We must therefore conclude that the greatest success with Egyptian cotton is to be expected in southern Arizona and southeastern California--a conclusion that is supported by the experience so far gained. The valleys of the Salt River and of the Colorado River (Yuma Valley) in Arizona and the Imperial Valley in California have been found to be admirably adapted to the production of this type of cotton.

See Agriculture; Wool; Silk; Flax; Hemp; Ramie; Felt; Calico; Cotton Boll-Weevil; Cowpea; Cellulose