Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/692

672 which. it is fed. This machine is objectionable on account of the slowness with which it operates, and also on account of its often crushing the seeds and thus soiling the staple.

The saw-gin was introduced into Brazil during the civil war in the United States, when it was necessary to put into the market at once a large supply of cotton. The saw-gin is said to break the fiber of the cotton much more than the roller-gin, and for that reason many efforts have been made by the English spinners to suppress it. But in spite of these efforts the saw-gin remains master of the situation, and nowadays it is but rarely that any other kind is seen in Brazil, even in the remote interior. In every community in which cotton is grown there is at least one gin, the proprietor of which buys the unginned cotton from the planters and small farmers, cleans and bales it, and sends it to market. No use is now made of the cotton seeds. They are usually thrown out as so much waste. The cattle are allowed to eat what they choose, and sometimes they are used for fuel.

—Owing to the ease with which cotton is produced, the extent of its culture, the difficulty of getting the raw material into market from remote points, the evenness and mildness of the temperature, which, as a rule, does not require the warmer clothing of a more rigorous climate, the number of domestic purposes for which it is used, and the high tariff upon foreign manufactured goods, the home consumption of cotton is very large, and has steadily increased. In consequence of the decree prohibiting the use of looms, the cotton consumed in the country, until the beginning of the present century, was manufactured in the most aboriginal manner. About 1845 cotton factories began to spring up, and there are now no less than fifty spinning and weaving establishments in Brazil.

The manufacturing industry is at present confined almost wholly to the provinces of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Geraes, São Paulo, and Bahia, where the demand for the better grades of cotton cloth is greatest. But the factories have by no means done away with direct domestic consumption of raw material. To the traveler in the interior of Brazil there is no more familiar sight than that of spinning with the ancient distaff and spindle. In some parts of the country this custom is so common that the children learn it as a matter of course, and it would be very difficult to find a person who did not know how to spin. In order to show the wide-spread knowledge of this art in the interior, a Brazilian gentleman once assured me that it might be taken for granted that the then Brazilian prime minister could spin cotton in this aboriginal fashion. Very nearly all the hammocks used throughout the northern part of Brazil, together with considerable quantities of coarse cloth, are still made of thread spun in this manner. The