AMONG THE COTTON PICKERS
When the train reached the station of Seedville the cotton fields with
the colored pickers were out of sight around a bend in the road. But
Bunny and Sue were glad they were going to stop not far away from this
new and interesting sight.
As the Brown family alighted from the train at the small station, a
gentleman with a broad-brimmed hat, under which his pleasant smiling
face could be seen, came forward.
"Hello, Jim!" called Mr. Brown. "Well, here we are!"
"So I see, and I'm glad of it!" Mr. Morton answered. Then he was
introduced to Mrs. Brown and the children. Mr. Morton was the man Daddy
Brown had come to Georgia to see on business. Later Mr. Brown would
have to visit Mr. Halliday at Orange Beach, Florida.
"Give me your checks and I'll look after your baggage," went on the
Southerner. "I have my auto right behind the station, and it's only a
short ride over to my place."
"Have you any peanuts?" asked Sue.
"Yes, I grow a few," answered Mr. Morton.
"Course you don't have any oranges?" Bunny added, feeling pretty sure,
from what his father had said, there would be none; but still he could
not help hoping.
"No, I'm sorry to say I haven't any orange grove," Mr. Morton replied,
smiling.
"Is that your cotton field we passed?" asked Mrs. Brown, pointing back
toward the scene through which they had come a little while before.
"That's part of my plantation, yes," answered the Southerner. "It's
quite interesting if you haven't seen it as often as I have."
A little later the family was riding toward Mr. Morton's home, where the
Browns were to stay while Daddy and Mr. Morton finished their business,
which would take about a week. Mrs. Morton welcomed the family, and
Bunny and Sue were delighted to find that there were two children, a boy
and a girl, not much older than they were--Sam and Grace Morton.
"Oh, now we can have a lot of fun!" cried Bunny, when he saw these
playmates. "Will you show me how to pick cotton?" he asked Sam.
"Sure," was the answer. "I help pick it myself, sometimes."
"And will you show me how to dig peanuts?" asked Sue of Grace.
"You don't have to do much digging," answered the little Southern girl,
laughing. "You just pull up the vines and the peanuts stick to 'em, same
as potatoes do. Course you sometimes have to dig out some that don't
come up on the vine."
While Mr. and Mrs. Brown and Mr. and Mrs. Morton were talking together,
the children were allowed to go to one of the near-by cotton fields.
Cotton, as you know, grows on low bushes, which are planted in long
rows, so the pickers may easily walk between them. In some countries the
cotton bushes, or plants, last from one year to the next, but in
Georgia most of the cotton grows from new bushes each year. The seeds
are planted in the spring, but the picking is not finished until
sometimes late in what is the winter season of the North.
Of course in some parts of Georgia there are frosts which kill the
bushes, and in these parts of the state the cotton must be picked
earlier than in the southern part, where the Browns were.
So, though there was cold weather and snow in Bellemere, there were
warm, blue skies in Georgia, and the colored men, women and children
were out in the fields picking the cotton.
As Bunny Brown and his sister Sue, with Sam and Grace, reached the field
of cotton, they could hear the darkies singing. Some one would start a
tune, and then others would join in.
"It's jolly!" laughed Bunny, as they stopped to listen to a funny song
about a mule.
"Yes, the darkies always seem to be happy," said Sam.
The children from the North watched as the colored pickers pulled off
the great, fluffy balls of white, stuffing them into bags or baskets
which were later taken from the field on two-wheeled mule carts.
"What are all those brown things in the cotton?" asked Sue, as she
looked at a fluffy clump on a near-by bush.
"Seeds," answered Grace. "The cotton clump, or boll, is full of seeds,
and these have to be taken out before the cotton is baled up for the
mill."
"Oh, I 'member about that!" cried Bunny. "We learned it in school. A man
named Eli Whitney made a machine for taking seeds out of the cotton."
"That's right," admitted Sam. "I'll take you to the gin, as it is
called, where the seeds are taken from the cotton and the white stuff is
pressed into bales. You ought to see the big presses! It squeezes the
cotton all up!"
"I hope it doesn't squeeze us!" laughed Sue.
"I'll keep you back out of danger," promised Grace.
The children walked through the cotton field of the plantation and were
greeted by broad grins and smiles on the part of the colored folk. There
seemed to be more children than grown people working in the field, and
Sam said it was sometimes hard to get old pickers, so children had to be
used.
The darkies did not work very fast, and often, as Bunny and his sister
walked along with their new friends, the hands would stop working to
look at the children. This, with their habit of stopping to sing every
now and then, slowed up the cotton picking.
"I'd like to go to the mill and see the cotton pressed into bales," said
Bunny after a while.
"All right, we'll go," said Sam. "You've seen about all there is to see
here."
As they turned away Sue suddenly called:
"Hark!"
They all listened, and Grace said:
"That's one of their banjos! They bring them to the field and play and
dance."
"Oh, let's see that!" cried Sue. "It'll be more fun than going to the
cotton factory!"
Bunny, too, wanted to listen to the music, so they turned aside into a
part of the field where most of the cotton had been picked from the
bushes. The darkies, who had finished this part of their work, were
celebrating after a fashion.
Some boards had been laid down, and an awning placed over them to make a
place where bags of cotton were tied up to be taken to the gin. Gathered
around this platform were a number of negro men, women and children. One
of the men had an old banjo, and though the instrument seemed battered
and broken, he managed to get some lively music from it.
"Golly, dat suah mek me want to shuffle mah feet!" exclaimed one
bright-eyed colored lad.
"Why doan you shuffle 'em den, Rastus?" some one called. "Show de white
folks how you kin cut de pigeon wing!"
"Oh, landy, banjo music suah am sweet!" cried an old white-wooled
colored woman, with a jolly laugh.
Then the man with the banjo "cut loose," as one of his friends called
it, and played such a lively tune that even Bunny and Sue said they
felt like dancing. But they wanted to see what the cotton pickers did,
and so they watched. Out on the wooden platform shuffled Rastus, and the
way he kicked up, turned cartwheels, stood on his hands and danced
around made Bunny and Sue laugh in delight.
Others of the pickers, men and women, girls and boys, danced, and then
along came the driver of one of the mule carts who had a mouth organ. He
added this music to that of the banjo, until quite a crowd had
collected.
"My goodness!" exclaimed a voice behind Bunny and Sue when there came a
lull in the fun. "Cotton picking can't be such very hard work after
all!" The children turned around to see their mother and Mrs. Morton,
who had come to the field.
"Oh, the darkies have to have their fun, and if we didn't let them we
wouldn't get as much work done as now takes place," said the wife of the
cotton planter. "Life is rather slow and easy down here."
Indeed it seemed so. After more banjo and mouth organ music, the pickers
gradually went to another part of the field, and Bunny and Sue, with
the two Morton children, were allowed to go to the place where the loose
cotton was pressed into big bales.
Cotton, as you have doubtless noticed, is very light and fluffy. A pound
of it, loose, takes up much room, and it is to save room that it is
pressed into bales, or bundles. Each one weighs about five hundred
pounds, and the bales are somewhat larger than a barrel, though of
square shape and not round. But if the cotton were allowed to fluff out,
it would take up four or five times this room.
Guided by Sam and Grace, Bunny and his sister were taken to the cotton
gin and baling place. First the seeds must be taken out of the cotton.
To do this the fluffy mass, as it is taken from the bags or baskets in
which it is carted from the field, is fed into a machine.
The machine is like a big clothes wringer, but the rolls, instead of
being made of smooth rubber, are rough, and covered with sharp iron
teeth.
As the cotton passes between these toothed rollers they tear it apart,
loosening the seeds, which drop down while the cleaned cotton goes to
the other side of the machine ready to be baled.
The cotton seeds are used for many things, being sometimes fed to cattle
in the form of meal, or from them oil may be squeezed which is almost as
good to eat as olive oil.
"I want to see the cotton pushed into bales," said Bunny, and his
Southern friends led the way into the factory. There were white wisps of
cotton all about, clinging to the walls and ceiling of the pressing
room, as well as to the colored men who were working there. Bunny and
Sue did not understand much about the machinery. But they could see how
the cotton was put into a sort of iron box. A big plunger then pressed
down what might be called the "lid" of the box. This squeezed the big,
fluffy mass of cotton into a bale, and iron straps, or wires, were put
around the outside of the burlap bagging that kept the cotton clean.
Sue was standing with Sam and Grace, watching the cotton being pressed
into bales, when suddenly behind them came a noise as of something
falling, and a voice cried:
"Oh, dear!"
"That's Bunny!" exclaimed Sue, turning around.
She did not see her brother, but she saw some men gathered around a big
heap of cotton on the floor of the gin. And, not seeing Bunny, his
sister Sue had the most dreadful scare.
"Oh, Bunny's in a cotton press! He's being put into one of the bales!"
she cried. "Oh, Bunny! Bunny!" and she broke away from the holding hand
of Grace and rushed toward the heap of cotton on the floor, which was
tumbling about in the queerest fashion.