Mossy Feet Books: Sample Chapter - Short History of Gardening and Agriculture

Cotton
Plant historians believe humans first started growing cotton sometime around 3000 - 4000 BC in India and Africa. During this same period archeologists have found evidence of its cultivation in the Indus River Valley in Pakistan and in Egypt. Cotton did not arrive in Europe until the First Century AD when Arab traders introduced it to Italy and Spain. Christopher Columbus found natives growing the fiber in the Bahamas during his first voyage in 1492.
The Cotton Plant
Cotton belongs to the Malvaceae family.
Family:
Malvaceae - Mallow
Malvaceae (from the genus Mallow, altered from the Greek word. in allusion to the mucilaginous emollient qualities, or mucus canals, of the stems.
The Family Malvaceae is a large family of plants that contains approximately 2300 species in over 200 genera. The family includes okra, cotton and cacao.
General characteristics of the family include alternate, palm shaped leaves. The flowers usually appear as a terminal inflorescence made up by a single flower with five sepals and petals.
Over time humans grew four varieties different varies of cotton
Gossypium arboreum L. - Indus Valley
Gossypium herbaceum L - Arabia and Syria
Gossypium hirsutum Mesoamerica
Gossypium barbadense - South America
Most modern growers across the world grow the species Gossypium hirsutum.
Wild cotton is a perennial shrub that is adaptable to a large variety of climates. Cotton varieties are found in arid, semi-arid and tropical environments. The plants can grow to six feet tall in cultivation. Wild cotton plants can grow up to twenty feet tall. Most cotton species are a shrubby perennial; however most cotton farmers grow the plant as an annual, replanting it every year. The broad, lobed leaves can have from three to five lobes. The flowers can be yellow or white, which darken, usually to a dark pink, by the end of the first day. The flowers mature to form a rounded seed bearing capsule called a "boll." The boll is filled with a fibrous material that surrounds the seeds. The fiber, cotton, is the most valuable part of the boll; however the seed also finds use ground into meal or pressed into oil. The cotton fibers can be white, brown, green or a mixture of these colors.
Cotton Cultivation
Cotton seeds are generally planted in rows from three to five feet apart. In the United States, planting generally begins in March and April, after plowing and harrowing the ground. About eighty days after planting the plants begin to flower, followed by the development of the green, triangular pods called bolls. The bolls mature from sixty to eighty days after this. The ripened boll bursts, allowing the cotton fiber to be visible. The boll has between seven to ten seeds embedded within the cotton fiber.
Cotton Harvesting
Harvesting the cotton historically has been a labor intensive affair. The cotton plant did not mature all the cotton at once. Instead, bolls ripened at intervals, creating a lengthy harvest time. Workers had to return to the fields twice, or more, to harvest all the bolls. If early ripening bolls were left on the plants until all matured the cotton fibers in the earlier ones deteriorated until they were unusable, thus causing a loss of a substantial amount of the crop. Thus, workers had to manually pick the cotton as they drug sacks that were ten feet long through the field behind them. These bags weighed as much as 100 pounds when they were full. Plantation owners expected workers to harvest two of these bags a day. The sharp cotton spikes usually cut the worker's hands as they worked. They had to repeat this process two, three or more times during the growing season, as the cotton plant would continue to produce bolls until winter set in. It was not until the 1940's that an efficient cotton harvester was developed.
Author note: During the period before the Civil War the workers were most likely slaves. After the Civil War, they would most likely have been sharecroppers. The author does not intend to delve deeply into slavery in this book; he merely wants to present the culture of growing and harvesting the cotton, as well as processing the fiber into cloth. The author will have a separate brief article later in this section dealing with slavery and the slave’s role in cotton.
Cotton Harvesters
Samuel S. Rembert and Jedediah Prescott of Memphis, Tennessee made the first recorded attempt to build a mechanical harvester, receiving a patent for their device in 1850. The device did not become successful. Over the next century numerous attempts were made to invent a mechanical picker. These used a variety of methods, including pneumatic, which used a blast or suction of air, static electricity collectors, strippers and many others. All were unsuccessful. John Rust came up with idea for the first successful cotton picker. He tried a variety of methods, none of which worked. He settled on a spindle type of collector which had a spindle with a smooth surface. He moistened the spindle after he remembered that, as a boy, he picked cotton in the morning, the dew moistened cotton stuck to his fingers. He also noted that his grandmother had moistened her fingers while threading her spinning wheel with cotton to get it to adhere. He and his engineer brother, Donald, built and tested the device, which worked. The International Harvester company picked up on the idea and developed third own version which used a barbed spindle instead of a smooth one like Rust's machine. They developed this machine in 1942, however it was in the early stages of World War II and manufacturers needed most of the steel to produce the tanks, weapons and other materials necessary to wage large scale war. Thus, production of the machine was limited. The Hopson Planting Company near Clarksdale, Mississippi, managed to produce the first crop of cotton planted and harvested entirely by machine in 1944. At war's end, the mechanical cotton picker began taking over the tedious job of picking cotton. Meanwhile, cotton hybridizers began developing cotton varieties that matured their crop all at once instead of over an extended period of time. These varieties also held the bolls further off the ground, making it easier for the harvester to do its job.
Removal of the Seeds
The cotton boll thus consists of seeds and the cotton fiber. The seeds make up about two thirds of the weight of the boll, the remainder being the lighter weight mostly cellulose cotton fibers. Removal of the seed from the fiber in the early days of cotton growing was a problem, as they needed to be removed by hand, a tedious chore.
Spinning the Cotton
Spinning tufts of fiber into thread, or yarn, is a craft that dates back to prehistoric times. The earliest form of spinning fiber into yarn was to roll tufts of fibers down the thigh with the hands. The rolling action twisted the fiber into yarn. The spinner kept adding tufts until they had the desired length. The next step up in spinning technology was to wind the fibers in a loose wad around a long stick called a distaff. The spinner attached a few strands of fiber to a tool called a spindle, which is a short, round, weighted stick. The spinner spins the loose fibers, twisting them, while pulling more fibers from the distaff. As the resulting yarn gains length, the spinner stops to wind the yarn around the spindle, and continues the process until they have a roll of yarn, ready for weaving into cloth. This was a daily chore that women performed, spinning wool, flax fibers, cotton or animal hair into thread. Historians are unsure of when the first spinning wheels appeared, however many think the originated sometime around 1030 in the Arabian world. From there, it spread to China and then to Europe. The spinning wheel was the first step in mechanizing the spinning process. Using the spinning wheel, the spinner starts twisting the wool with the fingers to form a thread by hand. When the spinner has a sufficient length, they thread the yarn through an orifice in the end of the spool, through hooks on a part of the spinning wheel called a flyer. The yarn is then tied securely onto the spool. The spinning wheel has groves that run to another groove on the end of the spool. An arm of the wheel attaches to a foot pedal by means of a crank. When the wool is secured to the spool, the spinner holds the bundle of fiber in the hand and gives the wheel a gentle push, starting it. The spinner can then work the fibers into thread, called carding, which the flyer twists before it wraps around the spool. The spinner keeps the wheel spinning by pumping with the foot while performing this operation. The spinning wheel made the spinning process go much faster than using the distaff and spindle.
Mechanizing the Process
This was the process used to spin cotton, wool, flax and other fibers into yarn for centuries. Lewis Paul and John Wyatt devised the first type of mechanized spinning in 1738. Over time water wheels and then steam engines provided power for the spinning apparatus. Today the process has been fully mechanized, however many crafters still practice the age old art of using the spinning wheel and the spindle and distaff methods.
Weaving
Weaving threads into cloth is an ancient art that dates back into prehistory. Archeological evidence indicates that it appeared independently in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas at different times. The simplest form of weaving was the band weaving method. In this process, the weaver simply tied thread to two sticks an equal distance apart. Then she would weave the cords, or thread, between the tied threads, creating narrow bands of cloth. They could wrap these narrow bands around them to form skirts, kilts or other apparel. Or they could sew the bands together to make something larger. Sometime around 6000 BC weavers started building looms. The first ones were simply a wooden frame on which they could tie the thread, or cord, and then weave other threads between them. This was a slow process and the cloth produced this way was quite expensive. Over time they developed the shed rod, which is a stick you could run between the threads fastened on the loom, separating every other thread. They next used a tool called a sword to raise half the cords at the same time. The invention of a device called a heddle road, sometime around 500 BC, allowed the weaving process to go much faster, lowering the price of the finished cloth. People living in different areas of the world used different types of cloth. In South America the natives used cotton and the fur of alpacas and llamas. In Medieval Europe it was mostly wool, linen, nettle cloth and cotton. Asia developed the silk industry, but also wove using various types of plant fiber like abaca and banana. Other improvements to the loom and the weaving process in the Eighteenth Century during the Industrial Revolution led to the construction of large mills in which thread was spun and then woven into cloth.
Cotton Prior to 1793
Prior to 1793 removing the seeds from the cotton boll was a labor intensive process that limited cotton production to about 13,000 bales in the United States. Wars between Britain and France limited Britain's access to French sources of the cloth. Improving spinning and weaving technologies had made cloth production much more efficient. The limiting factor of cotton production was the seed removal process. Slaves working on the plantations in the south could only remove the seeds from about one pound of cotton a day. Eli Whitney changed all of that in 1793 with the invention of his cotton gin.
Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825)
The son of Eli, Sr. and Elizabeth Fay Whitney, Eli was native to Westborough, Worcester County, Massachusetts. Whitney's mother died when he was eleven years old. At fourteen he started a nail manufacturing business in his father's workshop to supply much needed nails on a machine of his design during the Revolutionary War. He also made ladies' hat pins, the only hat pin maker in the county. His parents, including his new stepmother, opposed his desire to attend college, so did farm work and teaching to acquire the funds to attend Yale, from which he graduated in 1792. He had intended to practice law, but accepted a position as a private tutor in South Carolina.
To Georgia Instead
During his trip to South Carolina he met Catharine Littlefield Greene, the widow of General Nathaniel Greene. Upon his arrival in South Carolina he found that the salary he would receive was only half that promised. Instead of going to South Carolina, Whitney turned the job down and accepted an offer from Mrs. Greene to visit her plantation in Georgia. During his stay the plantation manager, engaged to Mrs. Greene, expressed his disgust at the difficulty of removing seed from cotton. Mrs. Greene invited him to present the problem to her guest, Eli Whitney, telling him that Eli "could make anything."
The Cotton Gin
Whitney observed slaves removing the seed from the cotton boll, paying particular interest in their hand movements while removing the seeds. In a few hours he built a machine that duplicated those movements. His machine dramatically increased the amount of cotton a slave could process in a day.
Patent Disputes
Unfortunately for Whitney, word about his revolutionary machine spread across the Georgia countryside like wildfire. Someone broke into his workshop and copied his design before he could file papers for a patent. When he did receive it, he spent the money he made on the machine battling patent infringements, thus instead of making him wealthy, the legal battles left him almost bankrupt.
Interchangeable Parts
Whitney turned his attention to making muskets. He had conceived the idea of using interchangeable parts to manufacture muskets. Many attribute the Whitney with the invention of interchangeable parts, however this idea was older that Whitney, having first been developed much earlier. Whitney developed and promoted the concept during his work on muskets, an endeavor he began in 1798. Until Whitney, all guns were made by hand by skilled gunsmiths. Thus, each part of every gun was unique and there was no standardization of parts. Parts from one gun would not fit another. Whitney studied the gun making process, and then designed a gun to suit his concept. He made a template for each part and used the template to make the parts. Thus, each gun after assembly was identical to another using his process. The process sped up the manufacturing process. He promoted the idea to other manufacturers and in the process changed the face of manufacturing in the United States.
Marriage
In 1817 Whitney married Henrietta Edwards. The couple would have four children.
Death
Whitney passed away of prostrate cancer in 1825. During the course of his illness he invented a number of devices to help ease the pain of his disease. He is interred at New Haven's historic Grove Street Cemetery.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Sample Chapter - Short History of Gardening and Agriculture - Cotton