When Cotton Was King

Amazon made news recently when it announced that in the future, it planned to deliver customers’ orders by unmanned drones.  In every generation there is a breakthrough in technology that changes society.

In 1794 Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin which would change industry and society.  Following the development of the cotton gin (short for cotton engine) cotton production increased over 800% in the next ten years.¹   By 1845 the U.S. was producing 7/8 of the world’s cotton.²  Cotton was only profitable if there was an abundant supply of cheap labor.  Eli Whitney believed that the cotton gin would reduce the number of slaves but that proved to be incorrect as the number of slaves rose from 700,000 in 1790 to 3.2 million in 1850, even though the importation of slaves from Africa was banned in1808.³  Some historians even believe that the cotton gin was a factor in the Civil War.  Certainly the motto “Cotton is King” reflected the importance of this single crop.

In 1914 a group of enterprising farmers built a cotton gin in Burton, Texas to process their crop for market.  From Burton the cotton travelled by rail to Galveston for export.  In 1914 the Burton cotton gin produced 82 bales; in 1923, 1,600 bales; and in 1953, 1,680 bales, more than 60 per day.  But by 1974, only 7 bales of cotton were ginned, and in 1975 the Burton Cotton Gin closed its doors.⁴   Fortunately in 1987 Operation Restoration revitalized this historic gin and it is now designated a National Historic Engineering Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Today it is the oldest operating cotton gin in the United States.

Postcard from the Texas Cotton Gin Museum in Burton, TX

Postcard (c. 1909-1914) from private collection

Postcard (c. 1909-1914) from private collection

Postcard (c. 1909-1914) from private collection

For the first 11 years following its 1914 construction, the gin was run by steam engine.  In 1925, the steam engine was replaced with a Bessemer internal combustion engine, which operated for 38 years.  Finally, in 1963, the gin was “modernized” a final time and the Bessemer engine was replaced with an Allis Chalmers electric motor.  The Bessemer engine, the largest internal combustion engine of its vintage still operating today, sits in a side building at the Burton facility.  During the cotton festival, when the gin is operated, the old Bessemer is also fired up.

 



The Gin as it looked on our visit in September 2013

The waste products from ginning are dumped through this chute

Cotton wagon.  The gin had a vacuum system to "suck" the cotton out of the wagon.

The Bessemer engine as it looks today.  It weighs over 15 tons

Before visiting the Texas Cotton Gin Museum in Burton I never gave much thought to the growing of cotton.  Until I had a firsthand view of the ginning process, I only thought of cotton as a label in a piece of clothing or the thread count in our sheets.  The growing of cotton, a cousin to okra, is really interesting and there is a plethora of uses for each part of the plant. 



Cotton is typically planted in April, and picking season lasts from August to November.
First stage of ripening is appearance of a pale yellow flower.

Within 12 hours, the yellow flower turns bright pink

The cotton boll just prior to opening

One boll is now open.  The second, just below the first, is about to open

One 500 pound bale of cotton can produce any one of these groups of products⁵

               215 pairs of jeans                             409 men’s sport shirts
               249 bed sheets                                  690 terry bath towels
               1,217 men’s t-shirts                          1,256 pillowcases
               3,085 diapers                                      4,321 mid-calf socks
               21,960 handkerchiefs                       313,600 U.S. currency bills ($1, $5, etc.)



A standard 500 pound bale of cotton in the Texas Cotton Gin Museum.
Note the tags on the bands holding the bale together.  They identified
the grower, the "lot" number of the cotton crop, and the gin which processed it.

What were once considered the “waste” by-products of the ginning process are used extensively today.  The first one that comes to mind is the cotton seed.  Cotton seed oil is used as a healthy cooking oil alternative, but cotton seed oil is also used for making cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and explosives, and in the manufacture of paints and finishes, insecticides, rubber, plastics, and waterproofing materials.  The linters (fine, silky fibers that adhere to the seeds during the ginning process) are used in everything from automobile upholstery to dynamite to x-ray film to mops to hot dog casings, and literally thousands of products that we use every day – and never think that they contain a by-product of cotton.⁵  When cotton was king?  Cotton may still be king today!



What was once "waste" is now a valuable by-product

Driving through Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas and the Missouri boot heel, there were fields of cotton as far as the eye could see, with monstrous bales in those fields that had already been picked.  The road sides were so white it appeared to have snowed. 



Large bales of picked cotton in the field, waiting to be transported. 
This is just south of Tunica, MS in October 2013

There are two types of pickers in use today.  One is the "stripper" picker, primarily used in Texas, but also found in Arkansas.  It removes not only the lint from the plant, but a fair amount of the plant matter such as unopened bolls.  Later, the plant matter is separated from the lint through a process that drops the heavier matter before the lint makes it to the basket at the rear of the picker.⁶

The other type of picker is the "spindle" picker.  It uses rows of barbed spindles that rotate at high speed and remove the seed-cotton from the plant.  The seed-cotton is then removed from the spindles by a counter-rotating doffer and then blown up into the basket.  Once the basket is full the picker dumps the seed-cotton into a "module builder."  The module builder creates a compact "brick" of seed-cotton, weighing approximately 21,000 pounds (the equivalent of 16 un-ginned bales) which can be stored in the field or in the "gin yard" until it is ginned.  Each ginned bale weighs between 480 to 500 pounds. ⁶


Case IH Cotton Picker

In 2008 the Case IH Module Express 625 was designed in collaboration with ginners and growers to provide a cotton picker with the ability to build modules while harvesting the crop.  An industry-exclusive on-board round module builder was offered by John Deere in 2007. ⁶

We went to Texas to find antiques at the Round Top Antique Festival.  We never gave a thought to cotton or cotton gins until we discovered the Texas Cotton Gin Museum in Burton and learned about the cotton industry.  That led to the start of a new collection:  Antique cotton bale tags from the Burton gin, complete with the story from a vendor in Round Top who had actually once worked at the Burton gin.
 



Examples of cotton bale tags.  These are no longer used.  Today, baled cotton is bar-coded



It’s funny how you sometimes just stumble across the most interesting Road Stories.






Visit the Burton Cotton Gin on line at www.cottonginmuseum.org     Open daily for tours.  There is an admission charge for the tour of the gin, but not to visit the museum.

¹  www.apstudynotes.org/us-history

           ²  www.about.com.inventors
           ³  www.boundless.com/u-s-history
           ⁴  www.cottonginmuseum.org
           ⁵  Burton Cotton Gin Museum handouts
           ⁶  Wikipedia