This is what harvesting means in the South. Here is a group of negroes busy gathering in the fleecy bolls of cotton. Men, women, and children are busy with the picking. Such a scene as this might be observed anywhere in the Cotton Belt during the fall of the year. This is the way cotton is grown. The ground is plowed and a good seed bed is made. In the early spring months of March and April the seeds are sown. They are purposely sown too thickly so as the insure a good set. When the plants come up they are thinned to the proper distance. They are cultivated. The harvesting lasts through several months. This is because the bolls open unevenly, requiring several pickings to harvest the crop. Then, too, the cotton belt extends over a great distance north and south. The farther south the picking begins earlier.

The cotton field that is shown you here may yield 400 pounds to the acre. Some fields grow as much as a bale per acre. A good picker in such a cotton field may gather as much as 500 pounds but this is almost twice as much as the average workman can gather. The Cotton belt extends through the following states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. The last-named state produces far more than any of the others. Our crop averages each year about 15,000,000 bales, of which Texas produces more than one-fourth. Georgia grows one half as much as Texas; and Alabama about three-fifths as much as Georgia. South Carolina, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, and North Carolina follow in this order.