Cotton Market in Montgomery, Alabama, with horse-drawn carts with cotton and farmers on top of them, in front of a line of stores

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Date Created:

unknown

Format:

Still image

Genre:

card photographs (photographs)

Extent / Dimensions:

10.27 x 12.79 inches

Note:

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Description / Abstract:

Recto: Cotton Market, Montgomery, Alabama, the Philadelphia Museums; Verso: Cotton Market, Montgomery, Alabama. Cotton fiber, or lint, consists of the seed-hairs of the cotton plant (Gossypium species, Malvaceae). After cotton is picked from the plants, the fibers must be separated from the seeds. This is done by a cotton gin. The name cotton gin is applied not only to the machines which separate the fibers from the seeds, but also to the large buildings which contain the ginning machines and the presses where the cotton is made into bales. The southern states of the United States produce more than half of the cotton raised in the world. This photograph shows a public square in Montgomery Alabama, where the farmers come with bales of cotton to sell. Each of them raised the cotton on his farm, took it to the grin and had the seeds removed and the cotton made into bales. It is a common custom in the South, to take the cotton to the nearest town to sell it. It will be seen that almost all the people in the picture are negroes. Alabama has a very large negro population. The few white men seen in the picture, walking among the wagons, are probably the buyers. Each carries a sharp knife, with which to sample the bales. They slash deeply through the bagging, pull out a handful of cotton, look at it, and state their price. As the sample is always taken from the same place in the bale and everybody knows it, the farmers generally put the cleanest and finest cotton where it will be taken fro the sample. The buyer knows that of course, so that the process of sampling is usually a mere farce. Almost the entire trade in cotton in the South lies at present in the hands of middlemen. In other words, the farmers do not sell the cotton directly to the manufacturers, but to speculators who try to buy it from the farmers when the prices are low and to sell to the mills when the prices are higher. These middlemen are often the ginners, or the grocery-men. The poorer farmers especially negroes, can rarely afford to hold the cotton themselves and wait until prices are favorable, as they need the money at once. Many farmers, therefore, sell their bales directly from the gin, and the middlemen frequently make large profits when the price of cotton rises. A striking feature in the picture are the mules. There is not one team of horses in sight. Mules are generally preferred in the South for all hard work, because they have usually more endurance than horses and they generally eat less