The roller gin was described in a most untechnical manner by Basil Hall:  “It consists of two little wooden rollers, each about as thick as a man’s thumb, placed horizontally and touching each other.  On these being put into rapid motion, handfulls of the cotton are cast upon them, which of course are immediately sucked in....  A sort of comb fitted with iron teeth ... is made to wag up and down with considerable velocity in front of the rollers.  This rugged comb, which is equal in length to the rollers, lies parallel to them, with the sharp ends of its teeth almost in contact with them.  By the quick wagging motion given to this comb by the machinery, the buds of cotton cast upon the rollers are torn open just as they are beginning to be sucked in.  The seeds, now released ... fly off like sparks to the right and left, while the cotton itself passes between the rollers."[35]

[Footnote 35:  Basil Hall, Travels in North America (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 221, 222.]

As to yields and proceeds, a planter on the Georgia seaboard analyzed his experience from 1830 to 1847 as follows:  the harvest average per acre ranged from 68 pounds of lint in 1846 to 223 pounds in 1842, with a general average for the whole period of 137 pounds; the crop’s average price per pound ranged from 14 cents in 1847 to 41 cents in 1838, with a general average of 23 1/2 cents; and the net proceeds per hand were highest at $137 in 1835, lowest at $41 in 1836, and averaged $83 for the eighteen years.[36]

[Footnote 36:  J.A.  Turner, ed., Cotton Planter’s Manual, pp. 128, 129.]

In the cotton belt as a whole the census takers of 1850 enumerated 74,031 farms and plantations each producing five bales or more,[37] and they reckoned the crop at 2,445,793 bales of four hundred pounds each.  Assuming that five bales were commonly the product of one full hand, and leaving aside a tenth of the gross output as grown perhaps on farms where the cotton was not the main product, it appears that the cotton farms and plantations averaged some thirty bales each, and employed on the average about six full hands.  That is to say, there were very many more small farms than large plantations devoted to cotton; and among the plantations, furthermore, it appears that very few were upon a scale entitling them to be called great, for the nature of the industry did not encourage the engrossment of more than sixty laborers under a single manager.[38] It is true that some proprietors operated on a much larger scale than this.  It was reported in 1859, for example, that Joseph Bond of Georgia had marketed 2199 bales of his produce, that numerous Louisiana planters, particularly about Concordia Parish, commonly exceeded that output; that Dr. Duncan of Mississippi had a crop of 3000 bales; and that L.R.  Marshall, who lived at Natchez and had plantations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, was accustomed to make more than four thousand bales.[39]