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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 1902)
THE BATTALION. 5 RAISING COTTON. S. P, H. Of all the cadets who walk down to the water-tank, on the railroad, about two miles below College, there are only one or two perhaps who know the story (and it is a true one) of how cotton was raised in the ravine, that njw forms the bed of the tank. It is because this little incident is so lit tle known and because I believe the place will be of more interest hereafter to the many who take their Sunday evening walk in that direction, that I am going to repeat this story once more. In the year 18— a young man happened to be riding along the road, that here runs parallel to the railroad, on a dark night in October and he saw something large, and apparently heavy, drop off the train. Com ing back the next morning to see what it was that had fallen he discovered it to be a bale of cotton. With the help of a friend he moved the bale to an old house and de cided to go to town, secure some new bag ging and on his return to re-bale and sell it. On the way to town our young hero’s brain was not idle and he commenced to think that if one bale of cotton could fall from a train why could not another do so? He then brought a lot of strong rope and a cotton hook. That night he fastened the rope to a tree near the track (and, by-the- way, there were a great many more trees near the track then, for the land around had not been cleared up or planted). At the other end of the rope was securely fas tened the cotton hook, and as the train passed a strong arm threw it well up on top of a flat car piled high with bales of cotton. As a result another bale was dropped from the train, rebaled and sold. Other men in this community saw that this was a paying business, and in a very short time some fifty men were “raising cotton” in the dark clumps of trees near the railroad. But there was one trouble, it was hard to get so much cotton rebaled and sold without being detected in the theft. Consequently, a gin was erected below college and the owner made quite a small fortune by rebaling cotton; charging pretty good prices for doing so, too, as he had to keep “mum” about it all, and, practically had a good many men’s lives in his hands, he could ask good prices and get them. Soon, however, the railroad began to make inquiries about the amount of cotton lost between Bryan and Houston and sent agents down here to find out the cause of it. The agents found out about where and how the cotton was lost and were anxious to catch the perpetrators of the theft, but the sheriff and other officers found it would be unsafe to investigate the question, so re fused to acknowledge that the deed was being committed in their county. It has since been found to be a fact that most of the public officers in the county knew who the thieves were and many were personal friends, in fact some of the officers had a hand in the “swiping,” as we would call it now. At last, however, a car left Bryan loaded
