Robert Sylvester Munger (July 24, 1854 – April 20, 1923) and his wife Mary Collett Munger (1857–1924) invented the "system cotton gin". After that achievement, Munger started and ran some of the largest gin manufacturing companies in the United States. He also developed properties in Dallas, Texas, including the first example of exclusionary neighborhood development by deed restriction in Texas. The neighborhoods have also been designated as National Historic Places. Munger was also a philanthropist who supported causes in the Birmingham, Alabama area.
Early life
Robert Sylvester Munger was born in Rutersville, Texas on July 24, 1854. His father, Henry Martin Munger, ran a sawmill and cotton gin there, and his boyhood included working in those enterprises. Robert later studied Latin and Law at Trinity University in Tehuacana, Texas. However his studies were interrupted when his father called him back home to run the cotton gin.
System cotton gin
For a decade and a half after 1865, the end of the Civil War, a number of innovative features became widely used for ginning in the United States. They included steam power instead of animal power, an automatic feeder to assure that the gin stand ran smoothly, a condenser to make the clean cotton coming out of the gin easier to handle, and indoor presses so that cotton no longer had to be carried across the gin yard to be baled. Then, in 1879, while he was running his father's gin in Rutersville, Robert Munger invented additional system ginning techniques. Robert and his wife, Mary Collett, later moved to Mexia, Texas, built a system gin, and obtained related patents.
The Munger System Ginning Outfit (or system gin) integrated all the ginning operation machinery, thus assuring the cotton would flow through the machines smoothly. Such system gins use air to move cotton from machine to machine. Robert's motivation for his inventions included improving employee working conditions in the gin. However, the selling point for most gin owners was the accompanying cost savings while producing cotton both more speedily and of higher quality.
By the 1960s, many other advances had been made in ginning machinery, but the manner in which cotton flowed through the gin machinery continued to be the Munger system.
Economic Historian William H. Phillips referred to the development of system ginning as "The Munger Revolution" in cotton ginning. He wrote, [The Munger] innovations were the culmination of what geographer Charles S. Aiken has termed the"second ginning revolution", in which the privately owned plantation gins were replaced by large-scale public ginneries. This revolution, in turn, led to a major restructuring of the cotton gin industry, as the small, scattered gin factories and shops of the nineteenth century gave way to a dwindling number of large twentieth-century corporations designing and constructing entire ginning operations.
Gin manufacturing
Munger approached several gin manufacturers, but they were not interested in making his system gin. As a result, in 1884, the family moved to Dallas, where the Mungers built their own factory. In 1887, other investors joined them under the name Munger Improved Cotton Machine Manufacturing Company. The Munger children, as well as Munger's brother Ennis, served as executives. The company's sales increased rapidly west of the Mississippi River. In 1890, Munger moved to Birmingham, Alabama to build a factory there to avoid freight charges to the east and to meet increasing demand. Munger's brother, Stephen, stayed behind as president of the Dallas operation. With additional investors, the Birmingham factory became the Northington-Munger-Pratt Company, which became the largest producer of cotton ginning machinery east of the Mississippi.
In 1899, the Mungers' companies merged with several of the other large U.S. gin manufacturers. Initially, Robert and Stephen were vice-presidents of the newly formed Continental Gin Company in Birmingham. The company continued to be a major gin manufacturer, and various Mungers held a large portion of the company's executive positions for the next quarter-century. The Munger family's substantial involvement ended in 1926, two years after the death of Robert and Mary Collett. At that point, a group of investors led by Ernest Woodruff of Atlanta bought a controlling interest in Continental Gin. One of Munger's sons, Eugene, stayed on in executive roles at least until 1939.
Surviving examples
A few early system cotton gins survive. Examples include: