Formerly the cotton when picked was piled up on a platform, called an "arbor," in the open air, but now it is usually taken to the gin as soon as possible. There are two kinds of gins, the "roller" and the "saw." The former has been used in India from time immemorial. It was at first a flat stone on which a wooden roller was moved by the operator's foot. Now it consists of two small rollers, one of wood and one of iron, turned by hand. These slowly press the seeds out. Five pounds of clean cotton is a day's task, and the woman who works the machine gets five cents a day wages. Various forms of this machine are in use in other countries. Before Eli Whitney invented his gin, cottonseed was picked out by hand in this country. Four pounds of clean cotton a week was the task assigned to the head of a family. This would be at the rate of a bale in two years. In the Whitney gin the seed cotton is held in a box, one side of which is a grate of steel bars. Between these bars a number of thin steel disks notched on the edges rotate rapidly. The notches catch hold

of the fiber and pull it free from the seeds. These fall to the floor. A cylinder covered with bristles revolves against the disks and takes from them the lint. A draft of air blows the lint far out of the machine, and it falls into a receptacle in which it is pressed down to be baled. The gins leave a good deal of dirt in the cotton. Some factories estimate the waste from this cause to be twenty per cent. of the weight of the bale.

Each of the big old plantations had its own gin, commonly operated by mulepower, but with the dividing up of the land into small farms gins have been built, like any other mill, as an investment, and the farmer brings his cotton to the gin as he brings his grist to mill. These gins are more apt now to be run by steam than by any other kind of power. Thirty cents per hundred pounds is an average price for the planter to pay for ginning and baling, and he furnishes his own "bagging" and "ties." The latter are the thin iron strips used to bind the bale. Twenty-five years ago planters were locating their gins over a running stream when

possible, that the despised and supposedly worthless cottonseed might be easily got ten rid of by throwing it into the water to float down stream. Now there are upwards of $40,000,000 invested in this country alone in mills and apparatus for utilizing cottonseed in the form of oil, meal, cake, and hulls, and the value of these products is one-sixth that of the fiber.

Steam mills increase the danger from fire -the foe which the planter perhaps dreads worst of all. A bale of cotton once set on fire will burn until it is destroyed, even if it be thrown into the water, and a pile of lint cotton-fiber from which the seeds have been removed-will burn close, while, oddly enough, considering the oil in the seed, a pile of seed cotton if set on fire will flash over, and then the fire frequently will die out.

Cotton bales vary greatly in shape. Within the last few years the cylindrical bale, much more compact and smaller than the square bale-weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds-has begun to be used. Each has its advantages. The first bale is usually brought to market in Texas the most forward State-by July 10, and the first bale in Alabama a month later. There is great strife among the planters to see who shall bring the first of the year's crop to market, and the first bale is often sold at auction for some charity. As soon as the picking is fairly under way the towns in the cotton States become centers of trade. Small villages on the railroads will handle as many as five thousand bales; larger towns, from that amount up to a hundred thousand bales. Firms in the big cities send out buyers, but much of the crop is handled by the local merchants, many of whom

now realize on store accounts which the farmers have been running for a whole year previous, secured by a mortgage on a part or all of this year's crop. These country stores boast that they can furnish anything from a cambric needle to a lumber wagon, and usually they can make the boast good. Whole families come to the village on this occasion-often the only time in the year when the women and children do come. Strings of mules or steers, hitched up one pair before another, draw the wagons, sometimes as many as five yoke of steers hitched to one cart. The head of the family sits on the tongue of the cart to drive. The women and children perch on the bales of cotton in the cart. An old, splint-bottomed chair will be tied on behind the load for "mother" to sit in going home, surrounded by the miscellaneous assortment of groceries, furniture, hardware, and dry-goods for which the cotton has been traded. "Mother" usually has a baby to bring along.

Many of these country teams come thirty or forty miles-too far for them to come and go in one day. For such as these, most Southern towns, or associations of traders, provide a public "wagon yard," a plot of ground surrounded by a wall and having stalls and sheds in which men and beasts can find shelter free of charge. In this yard at night, in cottonmarket time, there may be seen camped a dozen or more outfits. The tired mules and steers hitched about the inclosure champ bundles of fodder brought from home on top of the loads of cotton. The men sit about, smoking or talking, or cook their suppers over little fires whose lights and shadows make pictures such as one looks to see only in Spain, or in the East.