Two
kinds of the black-seed or long-staple variety thrived in the
sea-islands and along the coast from Delaware to Georgia, but
only the hardier and more prolific green-seed or short-staple
cotton could. be raised inland. The labor of cultivating and
harvesting cotton of any kind was very great. The fiber, growing
in bolls resembling a walnut in size and shape, had to be taken
by hand from every boll, as it has to be today, for no
satisfactory cotton harvester has yet been invented. But in the
case of the green-seed or upland cotton, the only kind which
could ever be cultivated extensively in the South, there was
another and more serious obstacle in the way, namely, the
difficulty of separating the fiber from the seeds. No machine yet
devised could perform this tedious and unprofitable task. For the
black-seed or sea-island cotton, the churka, or roller gin, used
in India from time immemorial, drawing the fiber slowly between a
pair of rollers to push out the seeds, did the work imperfectly,
but this churka was entirely useless for the green-seed variety,
the fiber of which clung closely to the seed and would yield only
to human hands. The quickest and most skillful pair of hands
could separate only a pound or two of lint from its three pounds
of seeds in an ordinary working day.
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