Cotton Wagons

We wrap up Cotton Week with this picture. It shows a long line of wagons filled with cotton, being taken to the gin. 

I have to say I am sad to see Cotton Week come to an end. I enjoyed spending the last few weeks in the land of Dixie, and am not sure yet what our theme will be next week.

Cotton Gin

Today's picture shows a Cotton Gin at Dahomy Mississippi. The picture was taken in the late 1800's and shows cotton being delivered for ginning, and finished cotton bales being taken away.

The cotton industry has changed a lot since then, and continues to change. In the old days, raw cotton was taken to the gin, and the gin took the husks off the cotton bolls, took the seeds out of the cotton, and then compressed the cotton fiber into bales. Now, the first stages of ginning are actually done in the field. Modern cotton strippers remove the cotton husk from the boll, and then there are "Module Builders" which compress the cotton into large cubes, with one cube fitting on an 18 wheel semi truck. These large modules are then moved to the gin to have the seeds removed. It would not surprise me if we one day see the entire ginning process done in the field, from picking to finished bales.

Weighing Cotton

When people picked cotton for pay, they were payed based upon how much they got picked. At the end of the day, their bags were weighed, and they were paid accordingly.

The picture above shows cotton pickers having their bags weighed. It was taken in 1935 in Pulaski County, Arkansas.

Cotton Picker

Good Tuesday Morning to you all. I hope your week is off to a good start. This morning we feature this photograph of a cotton picker in a cotton field. The picture was taken in the 1930's. Hand picking of cotton died out quickly after that, as you simply could not compete with the large mechanized pickers and strippers. 

Plowing Cotton

This morning's picture is from 1937, and it shows a sharecropper plowing a field for cotton. The picture is from Greene County Georgia.

It is my impression that most sharecroppers were pretty much gone by the 1940's. With the increase of mechanization on the farm, it became necessary to have a tractor and other such equipment to compete.

Cotton

OK, the picture of Eli Whitney yesterday should have clued you in that this was going to be Cotton Week here at OPOD. You see, all those riverboat pictures yesterday really put me in a Southern State of Mind, and I was taken back to the days of my childhood. Most of you probably don't realize that I grew up on a Cotton Plantation, and I spent the earliest days of my childhood picking cotton.

Now, it is a little bit of an exaggeration to say that I grew up on a Cotton Plantation. Really, I grew up on a Farm/Ranch that grew cotton. Also, by the time I came along, most of the cotton was picked with a combine. However, there still was a little cotton picked by hand, and I did go along a row dragging a big bag picking cotton bowls, but I think it was not so much that my help was needed as my dad wanted me to learn early in life that there were better things to do than pick cotton.

Anyway, I really love the picture above, showing women sorting some cotton. I am really not exactly sure what they are doing. There are bales in the background, which tells me that they are at or near the gin. The cotton gin can take the raw cotton bolls in at one end, and then strip the hard covering off, take the seeds out, and then compress into bales. I am not sure what the manual sorting is that the women appear to be doing.

Loading Riverboats

Today's picture shows a Riverboat being loaded in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I do believe I see a few bales of cotton being readied for loading. Now, as a professional courtesy, I tend to shy away from criticizing the riverboat captaintry of others, but I do feel like the captain of the middle riverboat brought her in a wee bit close to the riverboat on the right. If I were the riverboat captain, I would always try and leave at least three feet between me and the next riverboat when parking. I have always felt that such a courtesy tends to help avoid conflict and harsh words between the crews of the two vessels.

Loading Cotton

Finally, the picture I have been looking for . . . a scene showing cotton being unloaded from a Mississippi Riverboat. The picture was taken at a landing near Memphis, Tennessee. I am concluding that one of the most interesting things that you could have done in history was being a Riverboat Captain on the Mississippi River. If you look at the picture above, the cotton and other cargo is on the lower level. What is on the second and third decks? Are those passenger cabins?