Picking Cotton, Ginning Cotton :
   1945, South Louisiana

by James Bolner, Sr. 

Picking cotton is, beyond any doubt, the most inhumane labor a person can perform. Before the advent of the cotton-picking machine, all cotton was picked by hand, which meant collecting each cotton ball individually. Cotton before the picking machine grew taller than it does today, and there were two positions one could assume in picking cotton. The primary position was bending over, picking the fiber from the bolls, and then depositing it by handfuls into the cotton sack's ( le sac à coton's) opening. The sack was a long, narrow white denim cylinder equipped with a wide strap ( une bretelle) of the same material; the strap was fitted over one's shoulder and adjusted by various knots so that the opening was easily accessible. As the sack started to fill, the cotton usually accumulated near the opening and it was necessary to stop, pick up the sack with both hands and give it a shake or two to move the cotton to the bottom. As the sack filled it became heavier to drag and when the weight became uncomfortable it was time to go empty ( aller vider).

    A little more should be said about the sack. Preparing the cotton sack began in mid-August as the cotton-picking season approached. A good picker would sometimes hold on to an old sack which had been used for one or more seasons, but the usual practice was to have a new sack each season. The women sewed up the sacks from white denim bought at the local dry goods store, making sacks of varying dimensions for various members of the family. It was the custom to write one's initials on one's sack using the juice of mulberry bushes, whose fruit was abundantly available in mid-August. The ceremony of writing the initials completed, one tried out one's sack by dragging it on the porch and going through the motions of picking.

    Picking cotton is a competitive activity. Before emptying the sacks into the barn or wagon, each sack was weighed and the weight recorded. This gave my father a good idea as to how much cotton had been picked so that he would know when he could go with confidence to the gin. It also gave public notice how much each picker had picked. This was important especially if someone had been hired to pick, since payment was per pound. Weighing and emptying was the time for talk and refreshments, and the talk always centered on how much each picker had picked. A good picker would pick 250 or 275 pounds per day.

    Once enough cotton (approximately 1200-1500 pounds had been picked to "make a bale," the wagon was loaded with the cotton and taken to the gin. In the mid-1950's there were two gins in Plauchéville, two in Cottonport, one in Goudeau. There were other gins in Moreauville. The gin was chosen on the basis of what the going price was on a particular day, but since my Uncle Sibby was a cotton buyer, we ordinarily went to the gin where we knew that he would be buying since we knew that he would give us a good and fair price.

    Going to the gin with a bale of cotton was a great experience. The usual practice was to hitch the mule and the filly (Jake and Telsie) to the wagon well before dawn so as to arrive at the gin before daybreak. Lying on the loaded wagon under the star-filled sky, listening to the sounds of the wagon creaking and the team's clopping, and to my father's intermittent whistling--all these memories are as fresh now as memories can be.

    The gins observed first-come-first-served policy, of course, and by having his cotton ginned and sold at an early hour, it was possible to return home and put in more picking time. When one's turn came for the wagon to be emptied, a gin worker would climb the wagon and, using a large flexible vacuum machine, would suck up the cotton into the gin. The gin itself was a marvelous machine: it had a bank of large engines through which the cotton would be moved as the seed was extracted. At the end of the process, just before the actual pressing of the bales, the seedless cotton, clean and white, would be vacuumed up once again. Ahh--the vision of the vacuum gathering in the fiber from the clean swept concrete floor!

    The cotton was ostensibly sold on the basis of a buyer's cutting the thick baling material with his knife, taking a sample, and tweaking small pieces of the fiber between his fingers. One had the feeling that the sampling and tweaking had very little to do with the buyer's judgment as to the quality of the cotton and everything to do with the price which had been dictated for the day from New Orleans or Alexandria. There was a separate price set on the seed, and this "rebate" on the seed was often paid in cash while the payment for the cotton itself was by check.

    After the ginning was complete, we would return in the empty wagon. The high side panels would often be removed and placed on the wagon's bed. The team would ordinarily be hungry and would gladly respond to the order to trot home. On these return trips we would stop at Huesmann's store to pay "on the debt" (the debt was never fully paid!) and buy some fruit and groceries. It was expected that there would be bananas and oranges and apples on these occasions, and it was also expected that my mother would receive a little flask of "Anisette"--a pungent liqueur which she greatly appreciated and whose contents would last her well into the winter.