Cotton-Picker

Eli Whitney constructed a violin before he was 12, was an expert nail-maker at 16. In 1793 he invented a machine in which a toothed cylinder forced raw cotton through a mesh screen, thus separating the lint from the seeds. Eli Whitney's cotton gin patent was signed by President George Washington and two members of his Cabinet on March 14, 1794, and U. S. cotton, then no more than the material for a piddling domestic industry, began its history as a world commodity.

Two years before the cotton gin was invented the annual U. S. crop was 2,000,000 Ib. or 4,000 modern bales. Eight years after, the crop was 96,000 bales. By 1835 it was more than a million bales and by 1840 it had reached two million. For this sweeping upsurge the cotton gin could not take all the credit. Carding and spinning machines were developed, looms were fashioned better, railroad transport made its appearance. For 20 years the cotton crop has fluctuated around 15,000,000 bales, is now being held down to about 12,000,000 bales by AAA.

Meanwhile great strides were made in mechanical wheat harvesting. Threshers, reapers, combines, tractors replaced the man with the scythe and profoundly changed the economy of the grain-growing West. But today the cotton crop is harvested exactly as it was when Eli Whitney invented his cotton gin--by Negroes moving between the rows of plants, plucking the fluffy bolls by hand and stuffing them into huge bags which the pickers drag behind them. An average picker bags about 100 Ib. of seed cotton a day, for which, if he is hired by a plantation owner, he may, in good times, receive as much as a dollar.

The advent of a practical cotton-harvesting machine which would eliminate hand-picking would revolutionize the economic and social structure of the South. Reason for the nonappearance of such a cotton-picker is not sociological but technological. For 80 years men have tried to build a serviceable machine, and many a machine has been exhaustively tested. But the problem of taking in all or nearly all the ripe bolls without injuring green plants or gathering so much rubbish that ginning is impossible, seemed insuperable. International Harvester Co. is estimated (although it disclaims the figure) to have spent some $3,000,000 in cotton-picking research. Every year it sends experimental machines into the fields. But cotton is still plucked by human fingers.

Last week, however, a sturdy, efficient and economical picking machine seemed at hand. The South was abuzz with conjecture. The machine had been nursed through long years of experiment by its inventors, John D. Rust and his brother Mack. On one side of their harvester is a tunnel-like opening from front to back so that the machine straddles the row of plants. Into this opening a line of small, smooth, revolving rods project sideways. Carried on an endless belt, the rods first pass through a moistening device, then comb through the cotton plants. Because the rods are wet, the cotton sticks to them and winds itself around them. The adhering cotton is then mechanically stripped from the rods and passed into a hopper by suction. That is all. Planters who watched the Rust machine in action last season in Arkansas fields wondered why it had not been invented before. It traveled down the rows leaving the open bolls stripped (see cut), the green bolls unharmed. It picked up no, rubbish. In seven and a half hours it gathered as much cotton as a diligent hand-picker gathers in an eleven-week season.

The Brothers Rust were born on a Texas farm, orphaned in boyhood. They picked cotton. John swore that some day he would invent a cotton-picker to eliminate that back-breaking toil. He learned engineering and drafting from correspondence courses. Because he remembered that his grandmother moistened her spinning wheel to make cotton stick to it, the idea occurred to him to try a smooth, wet spindle on a mechanical picker. Soon he was joined by Brother Mack, who had graduated from the University of Texas and gone to work for General Electric Co. in Schenectady. Their first machines were tried out with encouraging success in Texas and Louisiana. They worked slowly, carefully, rebuffed outsiders, got along with astonishingly little money. Now they are incorporated as Southern Harvester Co., with headquarters in Memphis.

Last week the brothers had plans under way for construction of new machines, called the "Universal Pull-Model" which will be demonstrated this season and put into production next year. Probable price: $995 f. o. b. factory. Estimated operation cost per acre of cotton (including repairs, fuel, labor, interest): 98-c-. Planters have declared that with such machines they could grow cotton at a profit even if the price dropped below 5-c-per Ib.

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