Common Items Made Out of Cotton

The following list are items commonly found that are made from cotton: swabs, mattresses, hand bags, pillows, hats, towels, slippers, socks, yarn, t-shirts, and animal sweaters.

How the Cotton Gin helped technolgy.

The cotton gin had turned the whole South toward the cultivation of cotton. The South was not manufacturing any considerable proportion of the cotton it grew, but the textile industry was flourishing in North. A whole series of machines similar to those used in Great Britain, but not identical, had been invented in America. American mills paid higher wages than British and in quantity production were far ahead of the British mills, in proportion to hands employed, which meant being ahead of the rest of the world. The cotton gin helped the south regain strength after the civil war.

How has the technology effected agriculture/farmers.

In many developing countries, farmers and farmworkers work in cotton fields with few if any safety precautions to protect them from pesticides. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, farmers in many developing countries use antiquated and dangerous pesticide application equipment, resulting in spills and poisonings. In Pakistan, one of the top five cotton producing countries, approximately 50% of applied pesticides are wasted due to poor spraying machinery and inappropriate application. A 1997 Danish television documentary showed methyl parathion being sprayed on cotton fields in Nicaragua and Guatemala while children played in and beside the fields. It also documented numerous cases of methyl parathion poisonings in cotton production. Pesticide poisoning remains a daily reality among agricultural workers in developing countries, where up to 14% of all occupational injuries in the agricultural sector and 10% of all fatal injuries can be attributed to pesticides.

Farmworkers are also threatened by hazardous pesticides in industrialized countries. In one study of pesticide illnesses in California, cotton ranked third among California crops for total number of worker illnesses caused by pesticides. In September 1996, approximately 250 farmworkers in California were accidentally sprayed with a mixture of highly toxic pesticides when a crop dusting plane applied the chemicals to a cotton field adjacent to a field where workers were harvesting grapes. Twenty-two workers were rushed to hospitals with symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning. According to the crop dusting company, the pilot was experienced and followed regulations. County officials stated that the chemicals are registered for use on cotton and that the duster was not required to notify workers in the grape field prior to spraying.
Fish killed by pesticide run-off: In 1995, pesticide-contaminated runoff from cotton fields killed at least 240,000 fish in Alabama. Shortly after farmers had applied pesticides containing endosulfan and methyl parathion to cotton fields, heavy rains washed them into the water. The Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries stated that there was no indication that the pesticides were applied in an illegal manner.

Livestock: Meat and milk contaminated by pesticide-laden cotton straw. In 1994, Australian beef was found to be contaminated with the cotton insecticide Helix® (chlorfluazuron), most likely because cattle had been fed contaminated cotton straw. In response, several countries suspended beef imports from Australia. One year later, farmers were alarmed to discover that newborn calves were also contaminated with Helix, apparently because it was passed through their mother's milk. In a similar case, 23 farms in New South Wales and Queensland were placed in quarantine after inspectors discovered high levels of endosulfan in beef cattle, possibly due to endosulfan spray drift contaminating grazing land. Since 1987, Australian beef exporters have lost millions of dollars due to concerns about chemical contamination.

Birds: It has been estimated that pesticides unintentionally kill at least 67 million birds in the U.S. each year, and it�s likely they kill many more. Estimates of bird kills from pesticides are notoriously low because many birds remain hidden in brush, are carried away by scavengers or die away from treated areas where they won�t be counted. In one case, a breeding colony of laughing gulls near Corpus Christi, Texas, was devastated when methyl parathion was applied to cotton three miles away. More than 100 dead adults were found and 25% of the colony�s chicks were killed.

Disadvantages and Advantages of Cotton Pickers

Cotton pickers have many advantages as well as disadvantages. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States. Prior to his invention, farming cotton required hundreds of man-hours to separate the cottonseed from the raw cotton fibers. Simple seed-removing devices have been around for centuries, however, Eli Whitney's invention automated the seed separation process. His machine could generate up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton daily, making cotton production profitable for the southern states. While the gin has improved technology it has also caused problems. It is known that the cotton gin dangers the the fiber of the cotton. While it lowers the amount of workers need it increases the risk of injuries. While people could get injured the machinery is at risk as well. While a machine is down or not operating the way it should a special mechanic has to be called in to fix the problem. The problem can be very costly and take longer than what can be afforded.

Cotton Picker

A cotton picker is a machine for removing the ripe cotton fiber from the standing plant.

Generations of Cotton

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. E

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¢. Planters have declared that with such machines they could grow cotton at a profit even if the price dropped below 5¢per Ib.

very year it sends experimental machines into the fields. But cotton is still plucked by human fingers.

Unknown Author. "Cotton-Picker" November 17, 2008

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762244-2,00.html

Cotton picker at work.

Cotton Picker

The mechanical cotton picker is a machine that automates cotton harvesting.

It was first invented in the 1920s, but was not made practical until the 1950s, and even then, it was not immediately implemented on most farms.

The first pickers were only capable of harvesting one row of cotton at a time, but were still able to replace up to forty hand laborers. The current cotton picker is a self-propelled machine that removes cotton lint and seed (seed-cotton) from the plant at up to six rows at a time. There are two types of pickers in use today. One is the "stripper" picker, primarily found in use in Texas. It removes not only the lint from the plant, but a fair deal of the plant matter as well (such as unopened bolls). Later, the plant matter is separated from the lint through a process dropping heavier matter before the lint makes it to the basket to the rear of the picker. The other type of picker is the "spindle" picker. It uses rows of barbed spindles that rotate at high speed and remove the seed-cotton from the plant. The seed-cotton is then removed from the spindles by a counter-rotating doffer and is then blown up into the basket. Once the basket is full the picker dumps the seed-cotton into a "module builder". The module builder creates a compact "brick" of seed-cotton, weighing in at approximately 21,000 lb (16 un-ginned bales), which can be stored in the field or in the "gin yard" until it is ginned. Each ginned bale weighs roughly 480 lb (218.2 kg).

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Some people prefer the term cotton harvester to cotton picker when referring to the machine because cotton picker is also regarded as racial slur, a highly derogatory reference for black people, especially African Americans. It is considered very offensive because it makes a direct reference to the days when most African Americans in America were held as slaves, many of whom were forced to perform manual labor on cotton plantations.[1]

A recent example of the controversial near use of this term as a racial slur occurred when CNN's Lou Dobbs passionately railed against the need to speak with a certain "political correctness" about race.[2] Dobbs began to say "cotton picker" in an apparent reference to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, but caught himself and ended up just calling her "cotton."

Author unknown. "Cotton Picker" 11-12-08

URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_picker