Cotton was and still is a vital crop plant, it chiefly provided the South with a monetary advantage over several parts of the United States, and as for me… it made my family. My grandmother would have never left the small town of Moultrie, Georgia in search of a new life in South Florida, she was tired of picking cotton and knew there were better prospects. Even though cotton is an essential part of our daily wear, there were painful recollections surrounding the harvesting of cotton from my descendants. My mother, my grandmother and my great- grandmother all handpicked cotton, and as a child listening to their stories, I had a negative connotation of the crop, nevertheless there is more to cotton than what I comprehend. Cotton is not just a universal crop, but it has a universal name, according to the source, Natural History and Commercial History of Cotton by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce the chief title of cotton is gossypium. The source explains that this genus belongs to the monadelphous class of Linnaeus, and to the usual order of Malvaceous plants. Cotton has very distinct characteristics, “It is characterized by the three long deeply cut segments into which its outer calyx is divided ; by its large, handsome blossoms of five petals, of a yellow, orange, or reddish colour, with or without a central spot of a deeper tint…”(Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce 139). Cotton has copious stamens which are amalgamated in several different ways, some include the base of the stamen, or by single style which include three- five stigmas, or by its seeds which have several contained in each one. The source further delves into the characteristics o...
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...ittle effort and the increasing political strife amongst neighboring countries, it appears impossible. “Its soil is extremely fertile and well watered, with every variety of agricultural and mineral wealth to promote development. Its climate is almost perfect, and it is one of the few tropical lands where cotton can live and increase…” (Hogan 899). The source affirms that some countries have prospered from cotton production, such as Uganda and Nigeria, but seldom have other countries thrived. Cotton is not only used in clothes, towels, and jeans, but is used in fishing nets, tents, coffee filters, paper, socks, and it is used as filling for car seats, pillows, and furniture. In essence, I wear cotton and unintentionally I see it and use it habitually. Often times, I am unaware of its prominence in my life, but hence it truly is the “fabric of our lives”.
Southerners produced more than 50% of the entire world’s supply of cotton. About 75% of the luxurious cotton supply came from Southern states.
“The contrast in the relative prominence of slavery between the Upper South and the Lower South reflects the adverse health conditions and arduous labor requirements of lowland rice cultivation, whereas tobacco farming continued to be attractive to free family farmers as well as to slave owners”(Engerman, Sutch, & Wright, 2004). The lower South depended on their slaves more than the Upper because they were in the process of cropping tobacco. The Upper South had to keep up with the lower south, because they had to focus on their slave trade that would build and expand their plantations. During this era, the diverse between these two regions were more concerned with the values of slaves. The values of slave price can increase because of high demands between the upper and the lower South. As the upper South was coming up short, the slave profession took off. The slave profession helped the Upper South, yet there were numerous deformities. The slave percentage was at the end of its usefulness of significance “in the Upper South” significance it had a weaker understanding of community reliability than in the cotton areas. This made the upper south separate on what the future may hold. It was not clear on whether if the future was based on the Deep South’s financial growth between the North and the
The invention of the cotton gin made growing cotton practical, and cotton began dominating the growing fields. Cotton was a crop that could be grown almost anywhere because it seemed to need only the land to grow in. Land that was once left empty because of poor growth capabilities was planted in the lucrative crop of cotton. Growing cotton allowed farmers to grow crops in fields that previously had to rest for a season. The southern farmers were able to realize a profit thanks to Eli’s labor and time saving machine.
Slavery had a big impact on the market, but most of it was centered on the main slave crop, cotton. Primarily, the south regulated the cotton distribution because it was the main source of income in the south and conditions were nearly perfect for growing it. Cheap slave labor made it that much more profitable and it grew quickly as well. Since the development in textile industry in the north and in Britain, cotton became high in demand all over the world. The south at one point, was responsible for producing “eighty percent of the world’s cotton”. Even though the South had a “labor force of eighty-four percent working, it only produced nine percent of the nations manufactured goods”, (Davidson 246). This statistic shows that the South had an complete advantage in manpower since slavery wasn’t prohibited. In the rural South, it was easy for plantation owners to hire slaves to gather cotton be...
Cotton, once a very difficult and complicated crop to grow due to its many seeds stuck to its fibers, became a smooth, factory like performance with the aid of the cotton gin. Cotton was so important it made up two thirds of all 200 million dollars. The cotton gin, thanks to Eli Whitney helped remove the seeds faster, and not as painstakingly as before, this resulted in faster and greater production. A greater product wield means that the larger the workforce needed to grow in conjunction with the labor force, in this case reffered to as “King Cotton”. The greater workforce was slaves, and the invention of the cotton gin led to greatly expanding the amount of slavery in the South. The more slaves brought in to cultivate the cotton the more involucrate the Southern planters had become with agriculture, this strong attachment and dependency for cotton led to the South’s poor establishment of Industry. The total value of textiles from the South for example, made about 4.5 million dollars in the 1860’s, that may sound impressive but it is r...
Furthermore, Additionally, the slaves suffered a lot because the handpicking process of cottonseeds was time consuming; it required patience picking out the cotto...
During the early 1800’s the demand for cotton had risen and it was now “King” of plantations in the southern region of the United States, where the climate was best suited. Now more then ever, slavery had become an essential component of most every cotton producing plantation. The Southerners knew slavery was wrong, but made justifications for it; within a span of 30 years these justifications had changed due to abolitionist movements (in the northern half of the county) and economic reasons which made cotton and slavery more profitable than ever.
Secondly, the demand for cotton grew tremendously as cotton became an important raw material for the then developing cotton industries in the North and Britain. The growing of cotton revived the Southern economy and the plantations spread across the south, and by 1850 the southern U.S produced more than 80% of cotton all over the world. As this cotton based economy of the south grew so did the slave labor to work in these large scale plantations since they were more labor-intensive...
The King Cotton, phrase frequently used by Southerners and authors pre and post-Civil war era, indicating the economic and political importance of cotton production. “After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. The cotton gin was a machine that easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation”(Cotton in the South, Eichhorn). The cotton gin allowed cotton to surpass tobacco as the dominant cash crop in the agricultural economy of the South, soon comprising more than half the total U.S. exports. “At the time of the American Civil War Southern plantations generated 75% of the world 's cotton supply” (Cotton in the South). Throughout this essay I will examine the North Atlantic
Cotton was one of the biggest cash crops in the 1800s for the South. In fact, they produced 99.9% of all the cotton in America. It was an important export and the main source of income in the South. Southern farmers concentrated on producing cotton and didn’t produce enough food to feed the southern population. On the other hand, the North had a plentiful supply of food crops and produced 72%.
In chapter 4, Lakwete depicts the thirty-year transition from the roller to saw gin as more evolutionary that revolutionary. Whitney's invention was an important advance in cotton gin history, but many southerners before and after Whitney played vital roles in the development of the machine. In a direct writing style, Lakwete presents in-depth and wide-ranging research with helpful summaries at the beginning and end of each chapter. She painstakingly explains complicated technological issues, including the nuts and bolts of each machine, while providing the reader with context. This is an important book, and now in paperback form, a good candidate for graduate level courses. As is evident in this reviewer's attempt to summarize her chapters, Lakwete had her work cut out for her in trying to explain this complex industry and its even more complex machines. While Inventing the Cotton Gin serves as an exciting revision and raises even more exciting questions, Lakwete's detailed exploration of cotton ginning makes for slow reading for those not technologically inclined. It is understandable that Lakwete should demonstrate the differences between Whitney's machine and its predecessors and successors, and it is helpful to reveal the evolutions in production, marketing, and the needs of planters. But this reviewer would have preferred less detail and more summary, guidance, and context. Lakwete documents many cases of, and raises tantalizing questions about, southern industrialization, but readers of H-Southern-Industry will find themselves wanting more. Specifically, she declares in the preface that the "innovative southern gin industry belies constructions of failure read back from 1865. Instead, it forces a reconciliation of an industrializing, modernizing, and slave labor-based South" (p. ix). While Lakwete documents such innovation and returns to this theme occasionally, readers may wish for a
During 1798 through 1820, the state of Mississippi grew tremendously. With the availability to large quantity of inexpensive land, Mississippi’s growth and development is due to cotton. Mississippi became one of the largest states to produce cotton in America. Cotton was used for many reason some of it they traded off to other states. But most of all it was very useful to us like by making clothing to wear during the cold winters and pillows for the beds. They even crushed the cotton seeds into oil, meals, and hull. Which they used that for livestock feeding. The growth of cotton was so huge that they created the cotton gin which supplied jobs for many people mostly African American. Religious beliefs among the Americans today are as phenomenal, dramatic, and widespread as it has ever
In the beginning of the 1800s, economic diversities between the two different regions had also grown. By the year 1860, cotton was the chief crop for the South; it also represented fifty-seven percent of all American exports. The prosperity of cotton fulfilled the South's reliance on the plantation system and its crucial elementslavery.
Harvesting cotton needed a lot of hard labor. When the cotton farms got bigger, the need for slaves increased. During the first half of the 1800’s the slave population in the United States increased by about five times the number (How the Cotton Gin). By the middle of the 19th century the south provided about two-thirds of the cotton used by the world (How the Cotton Gin). The south became dependent on just this one crop and they needed the slave labor. The Cotton Gin made cotton very profitable and more plantations moved from producing other crops to producing cotton. This meant they needed more cheap labor so the need for slaves increased. The north was more dependent on industry for their economy. The north would buy the raw cotton and turn ...
Still, cotton stands alone as the most utilized fiber crop plant used around the world. Also known as "King Cotton," in the United States, it was the major force behind the institution of the American age of slavery, and cotton prevailed as the economic source for the southern states of the United States and its antebellum prosperity before the civil war. It holds an important place in America's past, present, and future. Cotton is truly the "Fabric of Our Lives".