Chapter 10 A LESSON IN THRIFT

That evening Carl resumed the cotton-raising subject by idly remarking, "I suppose since the invention of the cotton gin and the abolition of slavery most of the drudgery connected with the cotton industry has disappeared."

His uncle smiled.

"Hardly that, I am afraid, sonny," replied he. "Even under the best possible conditions the cultivation and gathering of the cotton crop entails drudgery. This cannot be helped. In the first place cotton demands steady heat to make it grow; and you know what it means to work all day in the broiling sun. Of course the negroes are to a certain degree accustomed to this; and moreover they belong to a race that finds hot weather less hard to bear than do many other persons. Nevertheless heat is heat, and say what you may, a hot sun pouring down on one's head does not make for comfort. In addition there is the monotony of the harvesting. As I told you before, this has to be done by hand-there is no escape from that; and since it must be, the dullness of the task is an unavoidable evil."

Carl mused thoughtfully for a moment.

"I don't see," observed he presently, "that after all the negroes are much better off than they were in slave days."

"Oh, yes, they are," Captain Dillingham instantly responded. "Remember they now receive wages; their hours of work have also been shortened and regulated; and overseers have become more humane and now invent little ways of breaking the monotony and making the time pass more pleasantly."

"How?"

"Oh, there are various things that can be done to achieve this end. Sometimes fresh buttermilk or some other refreshing drink is passed down the rows; or on a cool day hot coffee is served. Any little change such as singing or whistling interrupts the sleepy effect of one continual process and shifts the mood and spirits of those toiling into another groove. This is very beneficial. All our students of industrial methods will tell you that the worst flaw of our present system is the effect monotony has on the minds of those constantly subjected to it. Performing without deviation the same mechanical act day after day deadens the brain and even, in certain cases, produces insanity. It also kills ambition and creates hopeless, indifferent persons. Therefore, made wiser by psychology we realize the importance of stirring the mind out of a fixed rut, or rather a stupidity that verges on somnambulism, and keeping it alert and active. Sheep growers, for example, try in every way to divert the minds of their shepherds lest the continual watching of a slowly moving flock paralyze their minds and get them locoed."

"Really?"

"Your mother will tell you that. That is why a shepherd's pipe is such a splendid thing. To pick out a tune and listen to it starts the mind out of its trance and promotes mental exercise. It does what gymnastics do for the body."

"But all our factories keep men at a single task," Carl objected.

"You mean the piece-work system? Aye, I know," nodded his uncle. "And as we grow wiser, and come to care more for our fellows, we begin to wonder whether so much specializing is as fine a notion as we at first thought it. It makes for efficiency, for without question a man who does just one thing over and over becomes expert at his particular job; but does he not in time, because of his very expertness, lapse into a machine whose hands move automatically and whose mind is idle? Such a result is fatal both to his intellect and his will. He becomes passive until at length all initiative is destroyed. For many years the colored people of the South reaped precisely this harvest of mental inertia. Now, thank heaven, they are rousing out of the lethargy that has been their inheritance and their brains are getting to work. It will, however, take years, perhaps generations, for some of them to work up to a normal mental activity and intelligence; but if they persist results will surely come. Many of them have already shaken off their intellectual fetters so that not only are their bodies free but their minds are also. That is why I feel that all our citizens should do everything in their power to help them, and try and make up to them for the injustices they have suffered. It is not enough to take them out of physical slavery; we should break the chains of their mental imprisonment as well by giving them schools, trades, and such other training as is within their mental scope."

"I'm afraid I never thought of the negroes that way," confessed Carl.

"A great many persons older than you do not," Captain Dillingham returned kindly. "But when you do think of them from that angle you cannot but honor the more highly those colored persons who have achieved positions of importance. There are now in our country colored lawyers, doctors, teachers, poets, and writers. Who can tell what their background has been or measure the mental exertion that has brought them where they are to-day? Wherever we meet them we should give them a hand up. We owe it to them because of our own greater opportunity."

The little man stopped to light his pipe.

"Now see where talking about picking cotton has led me," grumbled he whimsically. "A pretty distance I've wandered from my subject! Well, you mustn't touch me off on the topic of the colored race again. I have seen many abuses of the negroes in my day, both on shipboard and ashore, and the subject turns me hot. Just how the evils of cotton-gathering are to be avoided I do not know. We must wait, I fear, until some clever individual bobs up with a scheme that does away with hand harvesting of cotton. In the meantime the only remedy left us is to vary the work of the men and women who toil at it as much as is possible."

"I wish, Uncle Frederick, you would tell us just how the cotton is gathered," said Mary, who had joined the group.

Captain Dillingham flashed the girl one of his rare smiles.

"I don't know, my dear, just how much more there is to tell," declared he. "Of course, if you have ever picked currants or blackberries you will realize something of the constant bending and stooping that goes with the industry and will understand how hard it is on the back. Then there is the continual standing, a tiresome business at best. Besides, mechanically as the task is rated, it is not such an easy one after all, for the cotton fibers stick firmly to the inside of the pods and as a result the unskilled person who tries to detach them in a hurry will probably succeed only in extricating a bare half of what is inside. And like as not he will break the fibers he does get out so that their value will be sadly decreased. The trade has its tricks, you see. Furthermore an amateur generally has fragments of husks and leaves scattered through his cotton, all of which have to be removed and make extra work later on."

"Then cotton-gathering is not really such brainless work as it might be, is it, Uncle Frederick," Mary asserted.

"Oh, it requires a knack that comes through practice," conceded her uncle quickly. "As soon as the pods crack open and show white it is a sign the workers must be on hand for the picking, and early in the morning they assemble that they may have a long day to work while the sun is on the crop. For as I told you there can be no cotton-harvesting without sun to dry off the night's moisture. The moment a bag or basket is filled it is emptied into something larger and the picker starts afresh. Before evening comes and the dew falls, the day's crop is hurried under cover that it may not absorb any dampness. Here it is packed into receptacles banded with the owner's name or private mark, and made ready to be carried to the ginning factory."

"The cotton is sent to factories to be ginned."

Page 129.

"Don't the planters have their own cotton gins?" queried Carl in surprise.

"Oh no, son! That would be an unnecessary and expensive luxury. Just as corn is sent to the miller to be ground, so the cotton is sent to factories to be ginned, weighed, and baled for shipment. You see the cotton grown on any one plantation and cultivated under uniform conditions will be practically of the same ripeness and weight; it will also be, in all probability, of the same variety. This fact is important when ginning and selling it, and greatly increases its value. Such conditions, however, do not always prevail for there are districts (and also countries) where small cotton farms exist whose output is not large enough to make an entire bale. In such cases the product of several farms has to be combined and this makes a bale mixed in quality. This is true of part of the cotton that comes from India. There many of the natives, owing to lack of commercial and industrial enterprise, raise small batches of cotton. Often it takes a great many of these little lots to make up a bale."

"Do the natives of India take the seeds out of their own cotton?" asked Mary.

"Some of them do, using the primitive gins so long known in India. The Chinese also gin much of their own cotton by amateur gins. But it goes without saying that much of the cotton fiber is broken by these methods. For the more perfect the gin the less loss results. Even with our best machinery however, a certain amount of injury is done which cannot be avoided."

"Then Eli Whitney's gin isn't so perfect," ventured Carl.

"Its method is as perfect a one as we have," answered Captain Dillingham, "and up to date nothing better has been found. Those handling large quantities of cotton are almighty thankful to have anything as good, I can tell you. In India, China, and oriental countries, though, where the lots are small the people, as I say, still cling to their primitive foot gins. Here in America we have several types of gin all made on the same general principle but differing slightly as to detail. Some of these are better than others. By this I mean some are less brutal and cause a smaller degree of waste. Indeed I believe Whitney's own gin and those of its kind known as saw gins are considered to do the most damage to the fiber. This sort of gin consists of a series of circular saws set into a revolving shaft in such a way that the cotton fed into the machine is separated from its seeds in an incredibly short space of time. Afterward a whirling brush cleans the saws of the fiber clinging to them. It is an effectual system but a merciless one and is best adapted to short staple cotton which is strong and does not snarl. The best gins use only long, smooth blades to clear the cotton and it follows that these do the fiber far less injury."

"How does a ginning factory look, Uncle Frederick?" Carl inquired.

"You mean the inside? I never went through but one. I was waiting for a cargo at Norfolk once and as there happened to be a ginning plant near where I was staying I visited it. Generally peaking I suppose they are pretty much alike. The cotton is brought to them, as I said, in clearly marked, or branded bags or baskets, and is tossed from the wagons directly into hoppers. Afterward the contents of the hoppers is loaded into freight elevators and shot to one of the upper stories of the factory, there to be piled up and await its turn for ginning.

"When the time comes to gin that particular batch it is heaped into a hopper and borne to the gins below by means of traveling racks."

"How many gins are there to a factory?" questioned Mary.

"That depends on the size of the factory and the amount of work brought there to be done," was the reply. "A fair-sized factory in a busy district will have half-a-dozen gins or more; and when you know that one gin will clean from three hundred to three hundred and fifty pounds of cotton an hour you will see that it will take a pretty big supply to keep such a lot of machinery moving. There is a separate hopper for each gin and if the supply fed into it comes too fast it can be stopped and switched to other gins. Once in the clutch of the relentless knives the cotton is shredded apart and the seeds drop out and fall into a traveling basket. From this basket they are forced through a tube to an oil mill which usually stands in another part of the grounds."

"Cottonseed oil!" murmured Mary, recognizing an old friend. "We often use it to fry things. It's good on lettuce, too. But somehow I never thought that it was really made from the seeds of cotton."

"We often accept terms without thinking much about them, don't we?" Captain Dillingham agreed. "But cottonseed oil is a genuine by-product of cotton."

"What is a by-product?" smiled Mary ingenuously.

"A by-product is something made from the leavings," put in Carl without hesitation. "Hash is a by-product of corned beef."

A laugh greeted the assertion.

"Technically speaking a by-product is something that is turned to account from what would otherwise have been waste. Every person who manufactures on a large scale tries to think what he can do with what is left after he has made the thing he started out to make. This he does for two reasons: first he wishes to turn back into money every ounce of material for which he has paid; secondly he desires to get rid of stuff which would otherwise accumulate and (if not combustible) force him into the added expense of carting it away. In other words he seeks to convert his waste into an asset instead of a liability. Therefore all big producers tax their brains to invent things that can be made from their waste, and such commodities are called by-products. Many of these things require no ingenuity for frequently they are articles much needed in other trades. Masons, for example, are only too thankful to have the hair taken from tanned leather to hold their plaster together; and those who dry and salt fish can easily turn the fish skins into glue. The by-products of great packing houses and tanneries are legion. Often such dealers will have at hand such a supply of usable stuff that they will establish other factories where their unused materials can be converted into cash. The sale of these products often increases very materially the profits of a business. Such a product is cottonseed oil. As millions more seeds mature each year than can possibly be used for planting why not turn them to account? Often there are from sixty-five to seventy-five pounds of seeds to a hundred pounds of cotton. Think how rapidly they would accumulate if something could not be done with them. During the war when we were unable to get olive oil from Italy and fats of all kinds were scarce we were thankful enough to fall back on the cottonseed oil made in our own country. At the oil mills machines are ready to clean the cotton seeds of lint, hull them, separate hull from kernel, and press the oil from the kernel itself. This oil is then bottled, labelled, and shipped for sale, making quite an independent little industry, you see. What is left of the crushed kernels is removed from the hydraulic presses and is remolded into small cakes to be used for--" he paused, glancing quizzically toward Carl and Mary.

"For what?" the boy asked.

"Guess!"

"I've not the most remote idea," Carl returned.

"Nor I!" echoed Mary.

"For cattle to eat," went on Captain Dillingham, completing his unfinished sentence.

"Even the hulls," he continued, "are, I believe, utilized in some way; and as I previously told you the lint which clings to the seeds is passed through a second sort of gin, gathered into a bundle, and afterward put through a carding engine which combs it out and prepares it so it can be made into wadding for coverlids, quilted linings, and quilted petticoats. All the gins then collect whatever material is left and this, being absolutely too poor for any other purpose, is sold as cotton waste to be used for cleaning machinery and polishing brass and nickel trimmings. Were we individuals half as thrifty as are manufacturers in salvaging the odds and ends that come our way we might save ourselves many a penny. Every year we Americans throw away enough food and wearing apparel to maintain a small army. We are, alas, a very wasteful people and are constantly becoming more so. Our ancestors used to lay aside buttons, string, papers, scraps of cloth and use them again. They made over clothing, fashioned rag rugs, conserved everything they could lay hands on. Their attics were museums where were horded every sort of object against the time when it might be needed. But do we follow their example? No, indeed! In fact, we go to the other extreme and hurry out of the house, either to a junk dealer or a rummage sale, everything we cannot find immediate use for. To a certain extent our mode of living has forced us to this course. Most of us reside in cramped city quarters where there are no spacious attics in which to garner up articles against a rainy day. Modern apartment dwellers boast neither attic nor cellar, to say nothing of a farmer's barn loft. Moreover, we all must scramble so fast to earn our daily bread that we have no time to make over the old; it is cheaper, we reason, to purchase new than to fuss with remodelling. Neither are materials what they were in the old days. Few of the fine old silks and woolens that would wear for a generation are to be had at present. Also we have more money than our forebears and this has much to do with our wholesale wastefulness. With plenty of everything at hand, why save? And the policy the individual is following on a small scale the nation is adopting on a much vaster one. We are using up our forests, our mines, all our resources with no thought of the morrow. We ought to stop and think about this before it is too late but I doubt if we ever will."

Captain Dillingham paused.

"There is such a thing," he added, "as people and nations being too prosperous for their own good. But to return to the cotton gin. The cotton, having been cleared of its seeds, is now known as lint, and this is bundled together until enough of it is collected to be properly baled for the spinning mills."

"What is proper baling?" inquired Carl.

"Why, the rough baling simply gathers the cotton together into a big bundle."

"Well, what's the matter with that?"

"Nothing-so far as it goes," laughed the Captain. "I should be sorry, however, to see many such bales coming aboard my ship."

"Why?"

"Well, you know what cotton is," answered Uncle Frederick. "After it has been picked to pieces in the gins it comes out a nice, white, fluffy mass that takes up no end of room. Were it to be transported in this condition a few hundred pounds of it would fill a ship or freight car and cost the owner so much that it would not be worth his while to transport it. Moreover, it would be bothersome to handle when it arrived at the spinning mills. Therefore before cotton is shipped it has to be reduced in bulk so that it will not take up so much space."

"But how can it be, Uncle Frederick? asked Mary, open-eyed.

"What do you do when you wish to make some soft material into a small parcel, my dear?"

"Oh, roll it up-squeeze it together," was the instant response.

"Well, there you have your answer!" responded Uncle Frederick. "Balers treat cotton lint in the same fashion; only, as they are not strong enough to accomplish this end with their hands, they resort to powerful machines, or compressors, to carry out the process for them. By means of enormous pressure they crush down the billowing lint until four feet of it can be reduced to a thickness of not more than seven inches."

"I wouldn't want to fall into that machine! chuckled Carl.

"There wouldn't be much left of you if you should, I can assure you of that," Captain Dillingham said. "Cotton, however, does not raise any such protest. It is pressed and pressed and pressed, and while still in the presses iron bands are put round it to hold it so it can be compactly transported. An American bale of some five hundred pounds will usually have six or seven of these iron bands round it. Certain of these bales are merely rough ones; others are cylindrical. I believe the latter sort are more generally preferred. To make them the cotton is gradually pressed and rolled by powerful presses until a bale four feet long and about two feet through is obtained. These cylindrical bales weigh a trifle less than the others-about four hundred and twenty-six pounds-and because they have been pressed so hard they keep in place without either iron bands or cloth covers. When they arrive at the mills the cotton from them can be unrolled and much more easily fed into the machines. If they are covered it is merely to keep them clean."

"Do all bales of cotton have to weigh the same?" inquired Carl.

"You mean is there a standardized weight for all bales?"

"Yes."

"No, there is no universal standard for bales of cotton. The bales from different countries differ quite considerably. For example a Brazilian bale usually weighs only from a hundred and seventy-five to two hundred and twenty pounds; the Turkish from two hundred and fifty to three hundred and twenty-five pounds; those coming from India do better, averaging about three hundred and ninety pounds. Should you handle this imported cotton you would notice that the bales from India are very heavily banded, often as many as thirteen bands encircling them. This is partly because the long staple of this variety of cotton must not be injured by heavy pressure, and partly because they have not in India the excellent facilities for compressing lint that we have here. The Egyptian bales are the largest transported; they run as high as seven hundred pounds and have about eleven bands to hold them."

"It must be a stunt to get them aboard ship," grinned Carl.

"I've taken my turn at the job," responded the captain drily. "We swing them down into the hold by means of cranes and have now learned to land them quite neatly. Nevertheless, even though they are only bundles of cotton wool I should not fancy having one of them drop on my head," concluded he with a twinkle.