Read "Cotton, Its Progress from the Field to the Needle" by Anonymous online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The cotton-planting season in all the Southern States commences in April. The seed is sown in drills, a negro girl following the light plough which makes the furrow, and throwing the seed into the shallow trench as she moves along. A harrow follows to cover up the deposits, and the work of "planting" is completed. About two and a half bushels of seed are required for an acre of ground.
In a week or ten days the cotton is "up," when a small plough is run along the drills, throwing the earth "from" the tender plants. The next process is "scraping;" in other words, thinning out and earthing up the plants, so as to leave each in the centre of a little hill, some two feet distant from its nearest neighbors. The dexterity and accuracy with which this feat is accomplished are wonderful; and there are few spectacles more animated and picturesque than that of a hundred active field-hands flourishing their bright hoes among the young vegetation, each striving to outstrip the others in "hoeing out his row." Several ploughings and hoeings intervene between the first of May and the last of June.