United States or Sweden ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To borrow statistics from the Commissioners' Report, a native woman can, with a roller-gin, turn out, say, nearly 3 lbs. of clean cotton from 12 lbs. of seed-cotton; while the industrious Japanese, who have brought over modern machines of the saw-gin type, can obtain 35 lbs. of clean cotton from 140 lbs. of seed-cotton in the same space of time.
When the close of our civil war put an end to the "cotton famine," as it was called, in Europe, and American cotton resumed its place in the market, the export of the East Indian and Egyptian cottons would have been immediately suppressed if they had not possessed the roller-gin in those countries.
One of the most important machines in the Exposition, from the American point of view, is the "double Macarthy roller-gin," exhibited by Platt Brothers & Co. of Oldham, England. It is a curious instance of how machines sometimes revert to their original types.
The oldest machine for ginning cotton is undoubtedly the roller-gin, and it was known in India, China and Malaysia long before Vasco da Gama turned the Cape of Good Hope and opened the trade of the East to the Portuguese and their successors. The common roller-gin of Southern Asia was shown at the Centennial from Hindostan, Java and China, and is exhibited here from Java.
The women are made to do all the work, for by them the crops are gathered, and by them the seeds are separated with the old-fashioned roller-gin.
Ten thousand of the double Macarthy gin are used in India, and five thousand of the single roller-gin in Egypt. It is understood that the saw-gin is used in but a single district in India.
It is thought by Southern members of the United States commission that the introduction of the double roller-gin into our country would greatly increase the profitableness of the culture of cotton, and especially of the "sea island," which is at present much neglected, and in the growth of which we need fear no rivalry.
In it the fibre is picked from the seed by means of saw-teeth projecting through slits in the side of the chamber in which the seed-cotton is placed. But the roller-gin has again come upon the stage, and with the late improvements is likely to become the gin of the future.
The slow action of the single roller-gin, cleaning about one hundred and fifty pounds of lint per day, made its cultivation too expensive, but the double roller-gin will clean nine hundred pounds in ten hours, or one hundred and twenty pounds an hour of the common upland short-staple cotton.
While the saw-gin injures any variety of cotton by cutting, tearing, napping and tangling the fibres, its action upon the long and fine staple called "sea island" is ruinous, and the roller-gin alone is suitable for working it.
Word Of The Day