African American men, women and children picking cotton in a field, with a man on a horse-drawn cart watching them

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Date Created:

unknown

Format:

Still image

Genre:

card photographs (photographs)

Extent / Dimensions:

10.18 x 12.67 inches

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Description / Abstract:

Recto: Picking cotton, Arkansas, The Philadelphia Museums; Verso: Picking cotton, Arkansas. Cotton (Gossypium species, Malvaceae), a relative of the hollyhocks and mallows, is cultivated in many tropical and semi-tropical regions. The fiber consists of the hairs covering the seeds of these plants, and is the most important of all vegetable fibers. Two chief varieties are cultivated in the United States: sea-island cotton, which develops on the low, sandy islands that fringe the shores of South Carolina and Georgia, and upland cotton, which is grown in the Gulf states and the interior and higher lands. The former is used for thread, laces and fine cambrics, while the latter enters into the manufacture of a large part of other cotton fabrics in all countries. The United States produces more than half of all the cotton of the world. Other great producing regions are India and the East Indies, China and Egypt. The United States exports about two-thirds of its cotton to be manufactured in Europe. The cotton is contained in four or five-capsules, known as bolls. Before the cotton bolls are mature they are egg-shaped, but when they are ripe, they split wide open from the top, and a large white tuft of cotton protrudes from each chamber. As the bolls ripen throughout the summer and fall, the fields must be picked over many times. The pickers, who are generally negroes in most of our cotton states, or Mexicans in Texas, hang long sacks over their shoulders. Using both hands, they pick from the bolls the bunches of cotton containing the seeds, and fill the sacks which they carry. When the picking sacks get too heavy to drag, they are emptied into larger sacks at the ends of the rows, or directly into a wagon. The wagon takes the loose seed cotton to the cotton gin. There the seeds are taken out by machinery and the cotton fiber or lint is pressed into bales. The bales are shipped to the spinning mills where the fiber is spun into yarn. Cotton yarns are made into cloths of various kinds, such as muslin, calico, gingham, cambric, India linon, canton flannel, etc., as well as into thread, string and rope. Cotton seeds, which were in former years a watste material, are now a very valuable by-product. Some are used for planting, some to feed cattle, but most of them are pressed to obtain cottonseed oil. The oil is used for cooking, replacing lard; as a table oil, either adulterating olive oil or as a substitute for it; and for making soaps and other less important products. The oil-cake left after the oil has been pressed from the seeds is an excellent food for cattle. Cotton, cottonseed oil and cottonseed oil-cake are all largely exported from the United States to Europe