This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.
Recorded by Buffalo Island Central High School, EAST Students, in conjunction with the Buffalo Island Museum, Arkansas.
Adams Land Co. Gin Manager Buddy Jones explains what a cotton gin does and gives the background of the Adams gin in Leachville, Arkansas. Built in 1992, it's still the largest gin in the world! The importance of the gin for the agricultural economy in the region is also highlighted.
Buddy Jones (00:04): My name is Buddy Jones. I'm the manager of Adam's Land Company, Gin. 1793, Eli Whitney invented the first cotton gin. Wasn't patented until a year later in 1794. It looked like a small wooden box consistent of a hand crank roller with wires on it that just pulled the lint from the seed. Before the gin was invented, they would have to do this process by hand. And the gin actually speeded up this process tremendously.
Buddy Jones (00:35): The gin was built in 1992 by the late Charles "Boe" Adams. It was built right here in Leachville, Arkansas. At the time, it was built to the highest technology and was the largest cotton gin. It still is in the world. This will be the 25th season that the cotton gin's been running. The cotton gin removes the lint or fiber from the seed. And then, the fiber is pressed into 500 pound bales of cotton. It creates jobs, boost our local economy through resellers, the farm equipment sales, and our farmers. At one time, there were 75 to 80 people that operated the gin on two 12-hour shifts seven days a week. From the time we've been in operation, we've run somewhere between 50,000 and 187,000 a year. And it's about an average of 120,000 bales per gin in season.
Buddy Jones (01:39): We start off with roller conveyors that carries the compressed modules, which adds about 12 to 15 bale in them, down a line to a disperser head, which breaks the modules up into smaller pieces so that we can run them through the gin. And then, it goes from that's disperser head into an air dryer. And then from the air dryer, it goes into incline cleaners. There's like two stages of that and all it does is removes the large leaves and sticks out of the cotton. Then, it's dropped into a conveyor distributor, which is an auger that just carries the cotton down to each gin stand feeder, and the feeder's just another cleaning process that breaks the cotton up to and drops it into the gin stands.
Buddy Jones (02:29): The gin stands are a series of saws that just removes the seed from the lint or the fiber. And the seed goes down into an auger and goes out into a pipe and blows it out into the overhead seed houses, which is ready to be shipped out by trucks. The lint itself goes through a lint cleaner, which is a series of saws and brushes that comb the fiber and takes out the smaller particles of leaves and trash. And that's the last cleaning process before it's bale. Then, it goes up into a battery condenser, which is just a large drum that's pulled to that drum by air. And as it goes around, there's another roller that wipes it off and it goes down a lint slide into a steel box.
Buddy Jones (03:19): The steel box is then turned into the press, the press presses the bale and ties it. And it comes out of the press onto a conveyor into an automatic bagger. And the bales are injected into a bag at that point and falls wade and falls off the line tagged and ready for shipment.
A complete transcript is available on the Museum on Main Street website.
Asset ID: 2018.20.24
