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
Figure 4 Thompsons Island, San Marcos River
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.
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
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
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.
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:
Figure 20 Skeleton Plant
Figure 21 Silver
Leafed Nightshade
Figure 22 Lindheimer’s
Senna
Figure 23 Retama
Figure 24 Zexmenia
Despite their willingness to bloom in this
dry period, they all would prefer a bit more water.
[1]
Texas State Historical Association’s (THSA) “Cotton Culture”.
[2] Roemer’s Texas 1845 to 1847 by Dr.
Ferdinand Roemer
[3]
National Archives, Educator Resourses.
[4]
Texas State University Archives
[5]
Texas Historical Marker
[6]
F.N. Day Trips column by Gerald E. Mcleod, Apr. 14, 2006 The Austin Chronicle.
[7]
THSA Cotton Culture
[8]
Jerry Pytlak-The New International Vol. 5 No. * Aug. 1939 pp. 247-250.
