AFTERNOON SESSION.

The Association was called to order by the President at two o'clock, who stated that the first business to be acted upon. would be the withdrawal of several persons who asked for leave to withdraw, their account with the treasury warranting their withdrawal.

Accordingly, the following-named gentlemen were granted leave to withdraw: George M. Goodwin, L. E. Kent, W. H. H. Whiting, John W. Farwell, and William F. Sherman.

The PRESIDENT. The next business in order, laid out in our call for this meeting, is the subject of "Picking." Has any gentleman any thing to say upon this subject?

Mr. ATKINSON. Mr. President, as nobody seems to be ready to speak, I will ask a question, Whether the proper place to pick cotton, in the sense of applying a picker to it, that is to say, getting the dirt out of the cotton that has been picked from the plant, whether the true place to treat that is not before it is ginned, rather than after? Theoretically speaking, the cotton in the bale that comes to you is infested with leaf and motes and bits of boll and sand and impalpable dust, and the like. You subject it to various mechanical operations involving the use of beaters that operate twelve hundred to sixteen hundred turns a minute, or in the "preparer," so called, five hundred turns a minute, in order to do what? To get the dust and motes, or immature seed, out of it. By the way, I ought to say that "mote" I found to be a technical term in the South (I did not know it until the other day), applied exclusively to immature seed that passes through the gin. "Specks" they do not call "motes," apparently, as you do. They limit the term "mote" to immature seed. They did not understand what I meant when I talked of bits of leaf and boll, and that sort of thing, as motes. Now, it is the leaf and mote and dust of the yard of the gin-house that are blown into these miserable gin-houses, and infest the cotton, that had been picked from the field in a pretty clean and good condition, with a lot of the trash that has been left behind from the cotton previously passing through that gin; every light breeze carries in a lot of trash that was in the seed-cotton, and deposits it in the lint. Now, your picking is to remove that in part: but all that kind of trash has the same specific gravity as the fibre

itself; and, when you beat it with a rapidly moving beater, and expose it to the draught of the wind of the picker, the light substance that infests the cotton goes along with the fibre of the cotton, and the sand and dust is pretty much all that is left behind; so that, when you have got your cotton into your lap, you have got a very large part of the original leaf and boll with it. Now, I suggested this theoretically some time ago, that, if you could apply some kind of beater, or the equivalent of a beater, something that would set that fibre in motion. while it was still attached to the seed, the seed giving it greater specific gravity than the trash you wanted to detach, — you could put through the seed, with the fibre attached, away ahead of the light stuff, and leave it behind. I did not expect to get that confirmed to the extent I have; but I have received some most remarkable examples of storm-beaten, dirty cotton, infested with so much trash as to be almost without value, that had been put through a machine of that character. I never saw the machine. I do not know how it works, but it is of that character; and that cotton has been converted into ordinary cotton, free from dust and free from sand,-a very good merchantable cotton, worth to-day seven cents a pound. That is one of several of the crude new devices that are being put in operation, and that will, according to my theory, render a less number of beaters necessary after the cotton gets to the factory. Of course, no one may expect to displace the picking machinery, as we know it; but if you can reduce the number of beaters and the number of machines by delivering the cotton to the mill-picker in good condition, I suppose that is a step of progress. There are at least four such machines, one of which is the Ralston machine, described here many years ago, which really is in practical operation, and the product of which has been sent to market in very considerable quantity. The only difficulty about it is, that Ralston has not much capital. He is away down in the border of Texas, and has not any means of introducing his machine. Then, again, its introduction has been retarded by the fact that a very large portion of cottongrowers have not yet been whipped by the schoolmaster of close competition, and rather prefer to have the dust and sand go on with the cotton, than to have it taken out. If you go South, and make an examination in the interior, you will find this: that the shop at the corner of the ways, where the four

ways meet, is frequently operated by a trader, who gets profits of one hundred or two hundred per cent on his goods advanced for the cotton; and it does not make much difference to him whether the bale of cotton he gets is a good bale or a bad bale. He takes so much cotton, and calls it such a price; and a cent a pound to him is not much on that, because he has made a hundred per cent or more on the barter-trade: and in that scattered population, not yet trained up to the economies that we are accustomed to, that is what is happening. They do not yet know enough of the ways of the world to know it pays better to make a good article than a bad one. In point of fact, up to this time it would not have made any difference to the majority of them; but when it comes about that this excess of a million of bales of trash is left on their hands,— as may be the case this year, - the schoolmaster will have come to town. Therefore I suggest that the beginning of picking cotton is to pick it after it is picked from the field, and before it is picked in the factory.

Mr. GARSED related some observations he had made in Georgia in regard to the ginning of cotton, after which the President reminded the Association that the subject before the meeting was that of "Picking.'

Mr. GARSED. I should like to have some gentleman in favor of single carding here get up and tell us how he can get an even lap without putting it through a double carding.

Mr. ATKINSON. I made the remark that the object of the card was to straighten the fibres of the cotton. One gentleman had the audacity to come to me in private and say it did not . do any thing of the kind; that, after the card straightened the fibre, the doffer snarled it all up again, and that it was really straightened on the drawing-frame. I should like to know if that is really so.

The PRESIDENT. Cannot the gentleman answer the question himself?

Mr. ATKINSON. My function is to ask questions. I have always been under the impression that the function of a cylinder-card was, in part, to straighten the fibres and lay them alongside of each other.

Mr. GARSED. The action of the cards is to clean the fibre by removing the motes and leaf from it: this is accomplished either by the worker and clearer card or flat card; the former

by cylinder and rollers around which the cotton is passed until the fibre is freed or stripped from motes and leaf, which, when so stripped off, fall to the floor by their own gravity, or are stripped by hand, or dirt-roller and comb. Now, that is the function apparently of the roller and clearer cards, so that the fibres are interlaced and crossed in an impenetrable mass, as you may see under the microscope. The flat card is more likely to make the fibre straight than the roller-card; but the function of that card is, that, as the wire takes hold of the seed or extraneous matter, it is caught by a flat, and that flat is stripped and taken entirely away, taking a portion of the cotton with it. But the evidence that the card does not straighten and keep the fibres straight, is the system of spinning cotton on woollen machinery where there is no drawing-frame. The thread of the same length is nearly one-third larger in diameter, in consequence of the cotton being interlaced as it comes from the card, than the same kind of cotton drawn on the drawingframe. In other words, it is a different character of cotton yarn, simply because there is no parallelism of the fibres by the drawing-frame. If you take a microscope and look at the fibre, as delivered by the doffer, you will find there is no parallelism about it. If you cut a square yard off, it will be very difficult indeed for a man to see whether they do go parallel with the doffer, or at right angles with the doffer. I think, not one man in twenty could tell whether it came from one or the other. Now, the railway-head is the first drawing that gradually pulls these fibres until they get parallel; and every drawing does precisely that. The superiority of the sewing-thread comes from the combing-machine, which lays the fibre in parallel lines. Then the drawing-frame still continues that parallelism. So that my friend Atkinson was in error partially when he thought that the card function was to make parallel lines of the fibres carded.

Mr. ATKINSON. I accept the "partially," sir. In my uninstructed way, I have observed that difference between the English roller-card and the American card. It appeared to me that there was a pretty important function in converting the fibres into parallel lines to some extent; that is, in putting the fibres into the condition that they would be if put into parallel lines. So, after all, is it not the function of the card either to lay the fibres parallel, or so that they can become parallel?

and is it not the wrong place to look to the card to get the dirt. out? Ought not that dirt to be out before the cotton comes there? It has always seemed to me, speaking theoretically, that cleaning cotton on the card is a mistake; that there is a want of skill somewhere; and that, while the object of the card was to take out the noils and partially straighten the fibres, there was room for improvement somewhere about that doffer, whereby it would not be snarled up so much. There is a good chance for Mr. Draper for another patent, but he is not here.

Mr. GARSED. Mr. Atkinson is partially correct. The flat card does lay the cotton more in parallel lines than the rollercard. For this reason the skilled spinner very often uses the flat card for his warp, and the roller-card for his weft, in cotton velvets, cotton flannels, and that class of goods. But the card is to-day the only way we have of cleaning cotton. We put it through the long trough, and the dirt drops by its own gravity out of the cotton; but, after you have done your best, there remains a very great deal of stuff that must be taken out by better means than gravitation. The pieces of seed and trash are so numerous, it is not possible to get them out in any way than by the close-set wire of the card, where, as long as there is any fibre upon it or upon the roller-card, it will be caught and taken along until that fibre is stripped by the cotton-gin; and it would be very largely stripped by the roller-gin in place of the saw-gin. I have never seen in my experience any machine that approached a cotton-card for getting the cotton into condition to be drawn. I think there is no other way known. Probably, if you had a cotton-gin, and placed it in beautiful order, cotton might possibly be combed from that point; although I am sceptical on that. There has been nothing discovered up to the present day except a woman's fingers, with the cotton taken from the field and twisted, to give that motion to elongate it, and, when she sees a thick place, to pull it down. There is no other way of doing that except a woman's fingers. Now, let us try, in the first place, to improve the cotton in preparation; but we cannot dispense with the card and the drawing-frame.

Mr. ATKINSON. No, we cannot dispense with the card undoubtedly; but you use a great deal more carding-surface than you would need if that dirt had not been left in, and glued in by the addition of water. In order to correct the original faults that ought not to exist, you pick your cotton twice as much as