]
The height of the picking season is in October. As no satisfactory machine
for picking cotton has been invented, it is usually done by hand, and
negroes for the most part are employed. Lines of pickers pass between the
rows, gathering the down and crowding it into wide-mouthed sacks hanging
from their shoulders or waists. At the ends of the rows are great baskets,
into which the sacks are emptied, and then the cotton is loaded into
wagons which carry it to the gin-house.
If damp, the cotton is dried in the sun. The saw-teeth of the cotton-gin,
as we have seen, separate the cotton fibre from the seeds. Then the cotton
is pressed down by machine presses and packed into bales, each usually
containing five hundred pounds, after which it is sent to the factory.
Various processes are employed to free the cotton from dirt and to loosen
the lumps. When it is cleaned, it is rolled out into thin sheets and taken
to the carding-machine. This, with other machines, prepares the cotton to
be spun into yarn, which is wound off on large reels. The yarn is then
ready to be either twisted into thread or woven into cloth on the great
looms.
The United States produces an average of eleven million bales of cotton
every year, and this is nearly sixty-seven per cent of the production of
the whole world.
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