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Your article states that John Rust hit upon the idea of using a smooth spindle and moistening same to make the cotton adhere. Almost every inventor who attempted to build a spindle-type cotton picker used this method, and study will disclose that the patent on same expired many years ago. The reason for using a smooth needle is to facilitate the stripping of cotton from it, but the amount of cotton dropped on the ground due to smooth needles has made most inventors discard it in favor of an aggressive barbed needle. . . .
I believe that a large proportion of the cotton in the South will be harvested mechanically within the next five years. . . . This should be welcomed by the Negro who is a slave to this most menial of tasks. . . .
. . . No labor-saving machine has yet been introduced which did not eventually raise the standard of living of that labor which it replaced. . . .
CHARLES R. BERRY
Greenville, Miss.
Last week Brothers John D. & Mack Rust of Memphis, who feared their mechanical cotton picker would do social damage, announced they had become trustees in a cooperative, 2,100-acre plantation near Hillhouse, Miss, where 20 families will plant cotton, harvest it with the Rust picker, market it collectively. Backer: Pious Publicist Sherwood Eddy, 65, who quit the Y. M. C. A. to preach Socialism.—ED.