Enjoying Nature Newsletter: Newsletter No. 20---Cotton

Cotton has been grown in Texas for 274 years since it was reported by Spanish missionaries in San Antonio in 1745.[1] The several thousand pounds produced annually were then spun and woven on site. And in 1813 nitrocellulose or gun cotton was used in explosives. Anglo-Americans took up cotton cultivation in 1821 and the state reported production of 58,073 bales each weighing 500 pounds.

Figure 1 Family Picking Cotton

Ferdinand Roemer[2] in 1846 tells of staying with a wealthy slave-owning planter who resided east of Caldwell. He found it remarkable that in spite of his wealth, the family lived in a simple log home and ate very simply. “And …though otherwise in agreement with his English cousin does not share with him the love for a comfortable and cozy home.” The owner told him that he was planning to abandon the farm in spite of its prime location and buy farther down on the Brazos River because it cost him about $500 a year to get his cotton to the market in Houston. Roemer noted that “The scarcity of easy communication …, is so general in most parts of Texas that it proves an obstacle in the development of the country”.

As everyone knows, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1794 in Georgia and patented it for use on short-staple cotton grown inland. The long-staple cotton grown along the coast could easily be parted from its seeds, but the short-staple contained sticky, green seeds that were a problem to extricate.

Figure 2 Whitney's early cotton gin

A small gin could be hand cranked; larger versions could be harnessed to a horse or driven by waterpower. According to Whitney, “One man with a horse will do more than 50 men with the old hand cranked machines.”[3]

However, he and his partner made little money from the gins they produced as the farmers resented having to go to his gins and pay what they considered an exorbitant amount. They began to pirate his gin designs, labeled them new and lawsuits against them were tied up in the courts for years. Instead, Whitney later became rich by making and selling gin replacement parts and by becoming the father of mass production. In 1798 he figured out how to manufacture muskets by machine, so the parts were interchangeable. His work with the cotton gin also created the technology with which the North won the Civil War.

The 1850s-60s saw a sharp increase in cotton production because of the removal of the Indians and opening of new land. By 1852 Texas was number 8 of the top 10 cotton producing states. The 1859 cotton census recorded 431,645 bales each weighing 500 pounds. The number decreased during the Civil War, but by 1869 had moved up to 350,628 bales. Railroads were built and stimulated the industry by making it easier to get the cotton to markets, so in 1879 some 2,178,435 acres produced 805,284 bales. It continued to rise, and the 1900 crop was more than 3.5 million bales from 7,178,915 acres.

Locally, Edward Burleson bought a large tract of land in 1844[4] that included the headwaters of the San Marcos River. He constructed the first dam on the river and the water from the spring powered his grist and sawmills. After his death in 1851, the “Mill Tract” property supported many different businesses including a cotton gin. There is an historical sign in front of the Salt Grass Restaurant on Sessom Street.

Figure 3 the Burleson Mill Tract

In the 1850s the William Thompson family moved from Louisiana with their slaves to plantations in Hays and Caldwell counties. With slave labor a mill was built on the San Marcos River which powered a cotton gin and lumber operation. This area is known as Thompson’s Island and there is an historical marker near the intersection of Cape Road and River Road at: Geo: 29.8674 -97.9315.

Figure 4 Thompsons Island, San Marcos River

Until the Civil War people in the area were mostly rural subsistence farmers according to Freeman Center. At about the time of the Civil War the population in Hays County was a little over 1,000 people, one third of them Black slaves. Cattle ranching was the main economic activity with corn the chief food crop along with small commercial crops of cotton.

In 1868 Alexander Parkes created an interesting and unusual cotton byproduct by combining nitrocellulose (gun cotton) and camphor. Known by other names as well, it was registered as Celluloid in 1870. Widely used in the 1800s and early 1900s, it was fashioned into pins, buttons, fountain pens, dolls and many other plastic-like items.

After the Civil War cotton production was aided by the growing web of railroads across the cotton producing areas. And in 1872 the Blackland Prairies of Central Texas hosted thousands of immigrants from the Deep South and Europe. Some bought small farms, but many worked as tenant farmers or sharecroppers for owners of as many as 6,000 acres.

The tenants lived in houses furnished by the owner, but supplied their own draft animals, tools and seed for which they received two-thirds of the profit from the ginned cotton with one-third going to the owner.

The sharecroppers, with a different arrangement from tenant farmers, furnished only their labor while the landowner provided the houses, animals, tools and seed. The profit was split between both parties.

Both tenants and sharecroppers were expected to trade for all their needs at the landowner’s store where an account was kept of the purchases. At the end of the season after they settled up, the laborers usually had little cash left over. This socially enforced crop-lien system began after the Civil War and lasted until the 1930s causing debt peonage or economic slavery.

In 1873 an immigrant from Germany, Henry Schumacher, of Navasota, built another machine very important to the cotton industry. Using the description from an old encyclopedia, he erected one of the first oil works that produced cottonseed oil, meal and cake. This machine could process about 1500 tons of seed a year. Cotton seed oil was an instant success. Cotton seed oil is now used widely in the food industry. Schumacher was honored for his contributions to the cottonseed oil industry about 1883 with a dinner at the White House given by President Chester A. Arthur. The first mill burned in 1910 but was rebuilt with all modern machinery and ran until 1954.[5]

Figure 5 Zedler's Mill in Luling, Texas

Built in 1874 on the San Marcos River, Zedler’s Mill is the same age as Luling and had been in the same family for more than 100 years. The water-powered mill was used to saw lumber, grind corn, mill cotton and was the town’s first electric generator.[6]

Zedler’s Mill is now a museum that is continually being enhanced. We last visited it a few weeks ago in August and more displays had been added to the cotton, corn grinding and tool areas. It sits on lovely grounds on Magnolia Street and is free and open to the public. Access directions and hours on the Web.

Figure 6 Old Cotton Compress on rotating table in Zedler’s Mill.

The cotton bale on the left has been compressed, tied and is ready to be removed as more cotton comes down the chute on the right side to fill the compress. Once compressed and bound it would have been rotated out like the previous bale.

In 1884, Robert S. Munger of Mexia[7] revolutionized the “plantation method of ginning” by devising the faster, automated “system ginning” that we use today. Huge cotton compresses that reduced 500 lb. bales to about half their ginned size were built along railroad rights-of-way in many towns for convenient shipping. This allowed farmers in interior cotton growing areas to sell their ginned cotton directly to buyers who shipped it directly to the mills. Cotton could be sold on the world market via telegraphed contracts. In addition to cotton fibers, cottonseed oil, and cattle feed from hulls, nitrocellulose to be made into celluloid was shipped as well.

The Lockhart Gin Co. that sits by the railroad tracks on Brazos Street could have been an example of that type of gin. In business for 113 years it began ginning this year’s crop of cotton on August 26.

In 1908 five local farmers purchased a site at 120 W. Grove Street in San Marcos (Geo: 29.8743, -97.9411) and built the Farmer’s Union Gin Co. It was established under the leadership of Oscar Calvin Smith. It was the first industrial–sized plant in town and was vital to the town’s cotton industry. The original gin house burned down and was replaced by the brick house in 1911, which remained in operation until 1966.

Figure 7 Farmer’s Union Gin Company

Figure 8 Austin Cotton Yard by Will Beauchamp about 1910

During the 1890s the boll weevil made its way up from Mexico and was first discovered near Corpus Christi. It wasn’t long before damage was noted in all the southern cotton-growing states. Farmers used calcium arsenate dust to fight back and along with help from the USDA and Texas at A & M, demonstration farms and experiment stations worked the problem.

WWI stimulated cotton production, but afterward prices slumped, times were changing and sharecroppers, tenants and returning veterans began moving to the cities to work in factories. Mechanization had begun to dominate the farms.[8] “The landlords are saying… they wanted to farm all their lands with tractors…in Hall County Texas alone there will be moving from the farms here 420 tenant farmers with the average of 5 persons to the family it simply means that 2,100 men, women and children will be driven…from the only occupation which they have ever known. Whither will they go?”

Other economic factors were the federal government’s control program under the AAA (Agriculture Adjustment Act) which curtailed farm product, reduced export surpluses and raised prices. Also affecting the industry were an increase in foreign production, new synthetic fibers, the tariff, the lack of a lint-processing industry in Texas and, WW II which brought a shortage of labor and disrupted commerce.

After the war another facet of the cotton industry came to the fore locally when in 1949 cottonseed companies, including the legendary Harper Seed Farm of Martindale, supplied a large percent of the pedigreed cottonseed produced in Texas.

Figure 9 Harper Seed Co., Martindale, Texas

The seed company and gin are still on site but are no longer in business.

Figure 10 Martindale gin on the San Marcos River

On Friday, August 23, we went to Lockhart and noticed several fields of cotton that looked close to being ready to strip. Cotton farming goes on year-round in Texas starting with planting in January in the Rio Grande Valley. And for the second year in a row Wesley Vanderpool delivered the first bale of cotton in the United States to the Willacy Co-op in Sebastian, Texas on Friday, June 21, 2019. The first bale of cotton has come from the Rio Grande Valley for the past 66 years.

South Texas including the Hill Country and Big Bend harvests cotton in late summer and early fall. Rolling Plains (Central) and East Texas harvest in October and November. The High Plains, (Wichita Falls, Amarillo} with the highest concentration harvest in December and early January near the planting time in the Valley.

Figure 11 Production in bales.

As can be seen in the above map, the High Plains area centered near Lubbock now grows most of the cotton in the state. And the town of Spearman up toward the border of Oklahoma on Hwy 207 is home to the largest cotton gin in the U.S. and soon to be of the world.

Figure 12 2018 Cotton production in the U.S.

The huge irrigated fields of the Panhandle are conducive to the use of huge machinery; stripper/balers or stripper/lint trailers that dump into compressor/module makers that are picked up by trucks that can haul the 8’x8’x32’ cotton modules.

Figure 13 Cotton stripper/baler

Figure 14 Module hauler

This photo was taken in the yard of the Lockhart Gin Co. The truck backs up to the leading edge of the cotton module in the field and a moving cog belt on the truck’s floor is engaged that hauls the module into the truck which then heads for the gin.

Figure 15 Lockhart Gin Company

We spoke to Roland at the gin and had been invited back for a tour later when they weren’t so busy getting the season started. We returned on September 6 to see what we could see. Following are some pictures R took of the proceedings.

Figure 16 Roland arrives from the field with 2 mini modules: 8"x8"x16'.

The moving track inside the truck is engaged and the module moves out onto the gin’s belt. Each mini module weighs about 20,000 pounds. The truck carries two of these mini modules.

Figure 17 The modules are on their way into the gin.

First, they are torn apart and enter air conveying systems to dryers and cleaners where all the field trash is separated from the lint. Then the cleaned lint is conveyed to the Cherokee 174 gin stand where the lint is torn free from the seeds. It is then blown on to an additional cleaner and then on to the compress where the lint is compressed into 500-pound bales, strapped and wrapped bales. From beginning to end the farmer’s number is marked on his cotton with a serial number and barcode. A sample is taken of his cotton which is sent to Corpus Christi where it is graded. This is how the farmer finds out how much he can charge for his cotton.

Figure 18 500-pound bales of wrapped cotton exiting the gin.

A forklift fitted with a bale lifter moves the bales from the platform to the barn. The barn is shown below.

Figure 19 Sal is leaving the barn for Taylor loaded with 100 five hundred-pound bales of cotton.

At the intersections of the Missouri Pacific and Missouri, Kansas and Texas lines and State Highway 95 and U.S. Highway 79 Taylor, Texas has been the shipping point for Central Texas cotton since the early 1900s. In just a little over 2 hours, Sal will be back for another load of cotton.

And thus begins another year of cotton production in Texas.

_____Sightings

Native plants that get all the raves this time of the year are the ones that can produce flowers with our droughty conditions. Here are five: