Picking cotton by hand is hard, boring work. Hardware stores used to sell knee pads for people who wanted to go along the row on their knees and pick cotton. A good picker could pick 100 pounds of cotton in a day. Even when it was a family operation, the cotton would be weighed on scales called steelyards supported on a pole held between 2 people and a running total kept. When hands were being paid by the pound to pick a total was kept for each person. Picking started when the some of the cotton bolls had opened and were dry enough to pick. The field might be gone over 2 or three times before it was finished. There had better not be even a little white showing in the field. Every lock(1/4 segment of a boll) counted. Today, chemicals are used to kill the leaves and ripen the crop uniformily so the mechanical cotton pickers can pick the cotton. They leave about eleven percent of the cotton in the field. The mechanical pickers dump the cotton in a big hydraulic press called a module builder which makes a big pile like a hay stack on the ground which is covered with a sheet of canvas. This module is picked up by a truck with a tilting bed which has a conveyor chain in the floor. The truck takes it to a gin to be ginned, with the clean lint pressed into bales. A standard bale is 480 pounds, a great yield per acre is 2 bales.
I remember going to the gin with Daddy in the 2 horse wagon pulled by 2 mules named Kit and Kate. I regretted starting school because I could no longer go to the gin with Daddy.
Cotton was one of the few legal crops where a living, not a decent living usually, could be made from a 20 acre crop. This is no longer true.
As every school child knows, the cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney in the 1790s. At first, cotton growing was VERY profitable and the business was accused of causing slavery to increase. Whitney was the classic clever Yankee mechanic, but he didn't make much off the cotton gin. It was so simple that many people copied it and Whitney had legal expenses trying to protect his patents. Later Whitney got a contract to make muskets for the US army. He developed the system of making each part of the gun precisely so that the parts were interchangeable so the guns could be made quicker and cheaper and turned a nice profit on this and other contracts. Of course, the principle of interchangeable parts is used in all manufacturing today. Later, Colt's revolvers were made at Whitney's old plant.
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Today's Featured Article - Show Coverage: Godfrey, Illinois Country Days - by Cindy Ladage. Except for last fourth of July's Old Gold show in Springfield, Illinois, I don't remember when it was so hot. Nevertheless, the heat didn't keep vendors and visitors alike from enjoying the third annual Country Day's Event. Jane Elliott said the event was originally a one man show. "Barry Seiler, owner of Country Town Farm Supply store used to invite people up to the Johne Deere store. He would give hats and a free meal for everyone that brings a tractor." Elliott said while this
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