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He grew the cotton, picked it, ginned it and wove it right there. He also had a baler and made the bagging to bale it with. He only had to buy the iron bands that held the bales intact. Doctor Miller was a rich man and had a far reaching sight into how to work slaves to the best advantage. He was kind to them and knew that the best way to get the best out of men was to keep them well and happy.
He and his tribe raised on his great farm here in Bradford County everything he needed to eat, drink, or to wear: his wife and daughters spun and wove their clothing from the cotton grown and ginned on his own fields; the delicious syrup and sugar which adorned and sweetened the mountains of rye pancakes and floods of home-raised coffee, was made from the cane which was grown, and ground on his own soil.
But even this proved a surprise for all, for nearly one thousand bales of cotton were ginned, at a total cost to the mill of only four cents per pound, while Cottontown had been fed during summer with all the vegetables and melons needed all raised on the farm.
You never saw how much cotton was ginned, nor how much he got for it, nor how much it was worth nor nothing. They would just tell you you wasn't due nothing. They did that to hold you for another year. You got nothing to move on so you stay there and take what he gives you.
"They continue to clean great quantities of cotton with Lyon's Gin and sell it advantageously while the Patent ginned cotton is run down as good for nothing," writes Miller to Whitney in September, 1797. Miller and Whitney brought suits against the infringers but they could obtain no redress in the courts. Whitney's attitude of mind during these troubles is shown in his letters.
He crossed over to his own, threw off his coat, put on a smoking-jacket and slippers, and lighting a cigar, sat down to think. Before very long Browning came in. "I found him," he said. "He was shy about giving me the facts, but I ginned him up to the confessional point. He told me all the truth at last.
Meanwhile ginners were calling for negro boys and girls ten or twelve years old on hire to help at the machines; and were offering to gin for a toll of one-fifth of the cotton. As years passed the rates were still further lowered. At Augusta in 1809, for example, cotton was ginned and packed in square bales of 350 pounds at a cost of $1.50 per hundredweight.
The ginned cotton is carried to the platforms, where it is "specked" by the women leaves, dirt and other impurities being picked out by hand and spread out to dry and bleach in the sun; thence we follow it to the "moting-room," where it is thoroughly and finally overhauled, every minute particle of dirt or other foreign matter and every flock of stained and discolored cotton being picked out.
They can bring such overwhelming force in all their movements that it has the effect to demoralise our new troops. The accounts given in the papers of the quantity of cotton shipped to New York are, of course, exaggerated. It is cotton in the seed and dirt, and has to be ginned and cleaned after its arrival.
About one hundred and sixty slaves, besides children, all owned by McGee, were worked on the farm. Instead of ginning two or three bales of cotton a day, as at Pontotoc, they ginned six to seven bales here. I remember well the time when the great Swedish singer, Jenny Lind, came to Memphis. It was during her famous tour through America, in 1851. Our folks were all enthused over her.
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