Another Cotton Picking Day!
by Norris Chambers
We didn't raise cotton. Our money crop was livestock that we brought to marketable size with the feed that we grew. We headed maize by hand, pulled corn, bundled and stored peanuts and harvested wheat, oats and barley. Usually at cotton picking time I was available to help someone else.
There were two ways of picking cotton - actually picking the cotton out of the bolls and pulling boll and all. If the crop was good, the cotton loose and fluffy and easily removed, then "picking" was the preferred method of removing it. If the bolls were small and tight and didn't like to give up the lint, then the boll was pulled off. This method was called "pulling". Most of the cotton in our area was pulled. When cotton was pulled, it took about 1600 to 1800 pounds (depending on the quality of the crop) to gin a 500 pound bale of marketable cotton. If the cotton were picked, then about 800 to 1500 pounds would make a bale, depending on the ratio of seed to lint, moisture content and the amount of trash, etc.
When we went to the cotton patch, we took a "sack" made of heavy cotton ducking. These sacks could be bought in various lengths or the ducking material could be bought and the home seamstress could make the family sacks. These were in lengths from three or four feet to twelve or fifteen feet long and perhaps 16 or 18 inches in diameter. There was a strong strap at the open front end that went over the neck and rested on the shoulder. The bottom end was, of course, closed. The kids used the small sacks and the better pickers used the larger ones. The long sacks were very heavy to drag when they were about full, but if a smaller sack was used it had to be carried or drug to the scales.
Cotton scales were simple balance type devices that were hung from the propped up tongue of the wagon. The sack was tied to the bottom of the scale and a "P", or small weight, was moved along the arm until it balanced. The weight was then read from the figures along the scale beam where the weight caused it to balance. A large P was used for heavier sacks and a smaller one for small sacks. The reverse side of the scale beam was calibrated for the small P. The crop owner usually designated an official weigher. He weighed all the sacks and kept a record of the amounts each picker brought in. After weighing the sack and the weight of the sack was deducted, the cotton was emptied into the wagon. The wagon bed had high side boards.
In low areas, or areas where the soil was richer, the cotton tended to grow much taller and produced much better. This tall cotton was sometimes five or six feet high and was a nice thicket when fully grown. Since no portable potties were available, the tall cotton was a welcome retreat for those needing the facilities. This use of the tall cotton was the originator of the term that is sometimes still used to indicate something desirable - .....in tall cotton!".
When the weigher announced that there was enough cotton in the wagon for a bale, the team was hitched and the load started on its way to the gin. In those days there were gins all over the country, and it was usually not more than six or seven miles to the closest one. If another wagon was not available, the cotton that was picked was dumped in a big pile and had to be loaded when the wagon returned. If there wasn't a tree available, the scales were hung from a tripod, made by tying three long poles together at the top in a "wigwam" manner. Some farmers used the tripod instead of a wagon tongue. Either system worked fine, and the cotton picking continued.
Schools began late in the year so the kids could help with the cotton picking. The first year I went to school the opening was about the middle of October. If the picking wasn't over when school started, the family usually kept them out until it was finished.
When the picking was over, it wasn't really over. The bolls that were not mature and had not opened at picking time later opened and it was profitable to the owner to go over the field again, picking the scattered bolls. This was called "stripping". You could not hire anyone to do this because the cotton was so scattered even a good picker couldn't pick enough in a day at picker's wages to make it worthwhile. But the owner, who could sell it for forty or fifty cents a hundred could make several extra dollars.
A bale of cotton, after ginning, usually sold for about fifty dollars. The buyer cut a big hole in the bales and inspected the cotton for cleanliness and condition. The gin would gin the cotton in exchange for the cotton seed, or if the farmer wanted to keep the seed, the cost for ginning was three to five dollars. Cotton seed was an excellent feed for milk cows and produced rich milk with a good flavor. (The taste of raw milk varied with the diet of the cow. Wild onions, especially, produced an undesirable taste. Horehound caused the milk to be bitter, etc.) The workers in the field were paid from ten cents to twenty cents a hundred pounds for pulling. Picking might pay as much as fifty cents a hundred.
A good cotton picker might pick as much as six or seven hundred pounds in a day or pull as much as a thousand. The average picker didn't do that well. About three or four hundred was average for an average, inexperience picker: a little more for a puller.
Everyone brought their lunch to the cotton patch (sometimes, if the field was not too far, the family went home for dinner). The cotton sack made a soft seat for sandwich munching and a nice bed for resting before going back to work. For a bed, the sack was doubled back (full of cotton) and the one resting lay in the lowered middle. Some folks built a fire and boiled coffee in a bucket, or a big pot. All of the crew was invited to share. There was a water bucket in the shade of the wagon with a dipper hanging on the rim. Everyone drank thirstily from the same dipper and when the bucket was dry, a kid fetched another. Better equipped groups had one or more water bags - these bags were made of ducking and the water seeping through kept the bag cool by evaporation. This was better than the water bucket.
The cotton was unloaded at the gin with a large vacuum tube. The tube was pulled down into the wagon and sucked the cotton directly into the ginning mechanism. Wagons waited in line to be unloaded. Sometimes, when the crops were heavy, the line was pretty long. There were sometimes games between those waiting, such as cards, dominoes, checkers, horseshoe pitching, marbles or tall tale telling.
As the year 2000 rolls around, not too many people can remember picking cotton. In a few more years, it will be a forgotten activity. The same could be said for most of the farm chores of the early part of the 20th century. Almost everything is done by machinery now. Instead of walking or riding behind horses or mules when plowing, and catching all of the heat, flies and dust, the farmer now sits in an air conditioned cab and listens to his favorite radio program or tape and guides his power-steered tractor down the rows.
But I'll bet the farmer still finds time to do some hard work.
And I'll also bet he finds time to enjoy it - just like we did.
It is the farmer, whether large or small, that makes it possible to go to the grocery store and fill your cart. Without him it would be a hungry world.
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