THE COTTON GIN

 By Caroline Clemmons

Although we share it with the South, one of the Southwest’s common sights is the cotton gin. Eli Whitney patented the first cotton gin in 1793. His invention increased the speed and quality of harvesting cotton. In the over two hundred years, the cotton gin has changed immensely. There is slight controversy over whether the idea of the modern cotton gin and its constituent elements are correctly attributed to Eli Whitney. 

Eli Whitney

The popular image of Whitney inventing the cotton gin is attributed to an article on the subject written in the early 1870s and later reprinted in 1910 in The Library of Southern Literature. In this article, the author claimed Catharine Littlefield Greene suggested to Whitney the use of a brush-like component instrumental in separating out the seeds and cotton. To date, Greene's role in the invention of the gin has not been verified independently.

Before Eli Whitney's Gin

Ancient Production

The worm gear roller gin, which was invented in the Indian subcontinent during the early Delhi Sultanate era of the 13th to 14th centuries, came into use in the Mughal Empire sometime around the 16th century, and is still used in the Indian subcontinent through to the present day. Another innovation, the incorporation of the crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared sometime during the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire. The incorporation of the worm gear and crank handle into the roller cotton gin led to greatly expanded Indian cotton textile production during the Mughal era.

It was reported that, with an Indian cotton gin, which is half machine and half tool, one man and one woman could clean 28 pounds of cotton per day. With a modified Forbes version, one man and a boy could produce 250 pounds per day. If oxen were used to power 16 of these machines, and a few people's labor was used to feed them, they could produce as much work as 750 people did formerly.

The Indian roller cotton gin, known as the churka or charkha, was introduced to the United States in the mid-18th century, when it was adopted in the Southern United States. The device was adopted for cleaning long-staple cotton, but was not suitable for the short-staple cotton that was more common in certain Southern states. Several modifications were made to the Indian roller gin by Mr. Krebs in 1772 and Joseph Eve in 1788, but their uses remained limited to the long-staple variety, up until Eli Whitney's development of a short-staple cotton gin in 1793.

Whitney's Version

Whitney's Model

Whitney's cotton gin model was capable of cleaning 50 pounds (23 kg) of lint per day. The model consisted of a wooden cylinder surrounded by rows of slender spikes, which pulled the lint through the bars of a comb-like grid. The grids were closely spaced, preventing the seeds from passing through. Loose cotton was brushed off, preventing the mechanism from jamming. The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South.

Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the region became even more dependent on plantations that used slave labor, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy. While it took a single slave about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day. The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850. 

The invention of the cotton gin led to an increased demands for slaves in the American South, reversing the economic decline that had occurred in the region during the late 18th-century. The cotton gin thus "transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse". Because of its inadvertent effect on American slavery, and on its ensuring that the South's economy developed in the direction of plantation-based agriculture (while encouraging the growth of the textile industry elsewhere, such as in the North), the invention of the cotton gin is frequently cited as one of the indirect causes of the American Civil War.

Nation's oldest continuously operating cotton gin

Burton, Texas

Modern Cotton Gins

In modern cotton production, cotton arrives at industrial cotton gins either in trailers, in compressed rectangular "modules" weighing up to 10 metric tons each or in polyethylene wrapped round modules similar to a bale of hay produced during the picking process by the most recent generation of cotton pickers. Cotton arriving at the gin is sucked in via a pipe, approximately 16 inches (41 cm) in diameter, that is swung over the cotton. This pipe is usually manually operated, but is increasingly automated in modern cotton plants.

The need for trailers to haul the product to the gin has been drastically reduced since the introduction of modules. If the cotton is shipped in modules, the module feeder breaks the modules apart using spiked rollers and extracts the largest pieces of foreign material from the cotton. The module feeder's loose cotton is then sucked into the same starting point as the trailer cotton.

The cotton then enters a dryer, which removes excess moisture. The cylinder cleaner uses six or seven rotating, spiked cylinders to break up large clumps of cotton. Finer foreign material, such as soil and leaves, passes through rods or screens for removal. The stick machine uses centrifugal force to remove larger foreign matter, such as sticks and burrs, while the cotton is held by rapidly rotating saw cylinders.

The gin stand uses the teeth of rotating saws to pull the cotton through a series of "ginning ribs", which pull the fibers from the seeds which are too large to pass through the ribs. The cleaned seed is then removed from the gin via an auger conveyor system. The seed is reused for planting or is sent to an oil mill to be further processed into cottonseed oil and cottonseed meal pellets for animal food. The lint cleaners again use saws and grid bars, this time to separate immature seeds and any remaining foreign matter from the fibers. The bale press then compresses the cotton into bales for storage and shipping. Modern gins can process up to 15 tons (33,000 lb) of cotton per hour.

Modern cotton gins create a substantial amount of cotton gin residue (CGR) consisting of sticks, leaves, dirt, immature bolls, and cottonseed. Research is currently under way to investigate the use of this waste in producing ethanol. Due to fluctuations in the chemical composition in processing, there is difficulty in creating a consistent ethanol process, but there is potential to further maximize the utilization of waste in the cotton production.

Cotton is still a big crop in many areas. The boll weevil is still feared for the destruction it can create. The boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis) is a beetle that feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central Mexico, it migrated into the United States in the late 19th century and had infested all U.S. cotton-growing areas by the 1920s, devastating the industry and the people working in the American South. During the late 20th century, it became a serious pest in South America as well. Since 1978, the Boll Weevil Eradication Program in the U.S. allowed full-scale cultivation to resume in many regions. Close surveillance continues to make certain that none of the little critters invade again.

Davis Gin, Dodson, Texas

Where my dad worked for decades

Cotton and My Life

For two decades before I was born and again for four years when I was a child, my father managed a cotton gin. He had worked at one most of his adult life. Our family had no idea this business was related to the Civil War or slavery, nor did our many relatives who farmed cotton.

After teaching two years, my father quit that job at the urging of two of his brothers because he could make more money working at the gin. This is a disgraceful, sad testimony to the plight of education and teachers! I have to stress Daddy always regretted not sticking with teaching.

If you’ve not been around a working gin, you’re in luck. These large plants belched pollution in aid of processing raw cotton into bales. Modern restrictions have decreed that they cannot burn burrs or pollute the landscape as in ages past. Trust me, they’re still not a business you’d want as a neighbor!

My late brother used to joke that at any crossroads where there was a cotton gin, there was also a café. While this is generally true, we lived at two places where there was only the gin, the gin office and scales, and a couple of houses—one for the gin manager and one for the lead ginner. Sometimes there were a few dwellings amounting to little more than the most basic housing (shacks) for other workers.

Sources:

Wikipedia

https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney

https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney-1992683