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.
