On an endless road of meadows and half collapsed barns exists a quaint town living its motto “The City of Progress”. Enterprise, Alabama is stuck between miles of bleak pastures and feeding cows, but the peanut factory overwhelms your every breath. The monotonous drive does have a reward, and it can only be found hiding in a valley of small stores and baptist churches on downtown’s main street. It is a statue that reminisces this town’s story of triumph over its struggling economy during the decline of cotton. Sculpted from stone, a woman is presenting a boll weevil in honor for its efforts in destroying the crop, cotton, Enterprise, Alabama’s main economic source.
The boll weevil. It is a common name given to an insect that infests cotton plants. Fully grown, they tend to be “reddish-brown, gray, or almost black in color and are normally less than 0.24 inches long” ("What is a Boll Weevil?"). Its snout originates from its face with two fork like spurs that extend it further out. boll weevils hibernate in grass during the fall and will not reappear until the spring ("What is a Boll Weevil?"). This small beetle looking bug was responsible for shattering southern economies such as Enterprise, Alabama.
The boll weevil’s primary food source are cotton plants, a crop that covered the southern plantations at the time. In the spring, when they emerge from hibernation, they puncture the cotton buds and lay their eggs inside ("What is a Boll Weevil?"). After about four days, the larvae are born. This is where most of the damage occurs. The larvae eat and destroy the cotton fibers("What is a Boll Weevil?"). The plant is plagued by these insects; they eat them until the cotton plant’s eventual death. The boll weevil season allows for man...
... middle of paper ...
...feel like he did really well and worked really hard on his paper.
The paper had a little more sarcasm than I originally intended, but it was inevitable given my topic. I did not have a problem writing this, and I really enjoyed it.
Works Cited
Chick, Weevil. "Weevil Wonderland." : The Daily Show. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
.
"What is a Boll Weevil?." What is a Boll Weevil?. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
.
“The Boll Weevil Honored in Alabama.” The Boll Weevil Honored in Alabama. Library of
Congress, 24 Apr. 2000. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Berntson, Ben. “Boll Weevil Monument.” Encyclopedia of Alabama: Boll Weevil Monument.
Alabama State Department of Education, 10 Aug. 2009. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
The sowbugs remained in the damp soil for 34 minutes, and the dry soil for a short 6 minutes (Table 1). The sowbugs remained in the damp soil 85% of the time, as opposed to 15% on the dry soil (Table 1). These results suggest that moisture was a causative agent in environment preference for the sowbugs (Table 1).
Grant Wood was a Regionalist artist who continually endeavored to capture the idyllic beauty of America’s farmlands. In 1930 he had been roaming through his hometown in Iowa searching for inspiration when he stumbled upon a house that left him spellbound. From this encounter came America’s iconic American Gothic. Not long after Wood’s masterpiece was complete the once ideal countryside and the people who tended to it were overcome by despair and suffering as the Great Depression came to be. It was a time of economic distress that affected nearly every nation. America’s stock market crashed in 1929 and by 1933 millions of Americans were found without work and consequently without adequate food, shelter, and other necessities. In 1935, things took a turn for the worst as severe winds and dust storms destroyed the southern Great Plains in the event that became known as the Dust Bowl. Farmers, who had been able to fall back on their crops during past depressions, were hit especially hard. With no work or way or other source of income, many farms were foreclosed, leaving countless families hungry and homeless. Ben Shahn, a Lithuanian-born man who had a deep passion for social injustice, captures the well-known hopelessness of the Great Depression through his photograph Rural Rehabilitation Client. Shahn and Wood use their art to depict the desperation of everyday farmers in America due to the terrors and adverse repercussions that the Great Depression incited.
As the Indians used slash and burn to make room for crops when the Americans came to Alabama they learned this type of agriculture and started growing cotton. This led to several events that dramatically affected Alabama's early agricultural development. The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain created a greedy appetite for cotton fiber, and in 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new type of cotton gin in the United States, which lowered the cost of processing fiber. “By the time Alabama became a state in 1819, the interior of the state was easily accessed via the Tombigbee, Warrior, Alabama, and Chattahoochee rivers. Crops could also be transported to European and New England markets via the ports of Mobile and Apalachicola, Florida. Settlers poured into the new state with one objective to grow cotton. As time passed there was almost four million acres of cotton growing in Alabama” (Mitchell, 2007). As time progressed people thought of a new type of agriculture.
Antebellum South Carolina was a period considered to be between 1790 and the American civil war in 1861. In 1786 the cotton gin was created causing the cotton industry to increase its labor demand due to the increased harvest size on the plantations. Not only was the cotton industry in high demand but also so was rice harvesting causing South Carolina to become a heavily slave populated state. Image A and B both represent two periods of slavery during the antebellum South Carolina. Image A shows an advertisement for a slave sale in Charles Town South Carolina on the Ashley Ferry river, while image B shows an illustration of elderly domestic house servants looking after both white and black children. Image A was taken before the start of the antebellum period in 1760 unlike image B that was sketched towards the end of this period in South Carolina in 1863. The two images represent the change that occurred through the state of South Carolina in regards to slavery.
...l; Retired, formerly apiculturist, U.S. Department of Agriculture. BEEKEEPING IN THE UNITED STATES; AGRICULTURE HANDBOOK NUMBER 335 Revised October 1980; Pages 2 – 9
At first I was scared of this paper and the amount of research that was involved. During my research though I quickly realized that the information was out there I just needed to know where to look. I also learned that a paper as long as this can be easily written if you put a solid effort into it. This paper was an absolute joy for me to write because it was a topic that I love. I have learned so much more than I ever expected.
Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird explores the underlying racism that exists in Alabama, and perhaps all over America, in the 1930s. It focuses mainly on the practice of racial prejudice and discrimination. However, other subsequent issues are also mentioned throughout the novel. As we all know, To Kill A Mockingbird is set shortly after the Great Depression had hit America in 1929. It had a disastrous impact on the Southern part of America, including Alabama, because most of its citizens are farmers. Therefore, by extension, their lives are more reliant on agriculture.
The antebellum slavery period was characterized by the black freedmen in the North and slaves of the South working under harsh conditions for the few cotton farming elite. While the freedmen did indeed have their freedom, they were equally subject to racism from white people. Cotton production was booming in the south and...
Antagonization clearly presents itself in Maycomb county. The alienation of the poor and embarrassing, hatred towards people who encourage righteousness, and distressing its population shows this to be true. By making the county as a whole the protagonist, Lee conveys that racism and prejudice cause conflict in society. Interestingly, instead of having one antagonist to represent all that is evil, she says that all of the people who make up a county or community each work together to cause trouble, and potential death of an innocent “mockingbird.”
Other debates that struck me from learning more about the Antebellum America period in this week’s content were the issue on the differential economies between the North and the South, and the rapid flow of immigrants into the United States. Regardless on the debate of slavery, the North and the South had two completely different means of economic production. In the North, early industrialization and the rise in manufacturing fueled the economy. A population shift from farms to cities had already begun, but the promise of better income in factory jobs accelerated that movement. While in the South, the cotton economy became a rich economic prosperity. However, as the quality of land decreased from over-cultivation, land owners began looking
Back in the seventeen and eighteen hundredths, cotton was America’s greatest exports. “the southern states were producing two thirds of the world's cotton.”(Ciment 6) It was an ideal crop that could easily be grown. “His cotton gin enabled a laborer to separate a lot of cotton from the seeds with little effort. A laborer working by hand could once expect to produce only one pound of cleaned cotton per day. With the help of a cotton gin, fifty pounds could be cleaned in a day.” (Benson 399, 400) After the invention of the cotton gin, the profit of cotton has double every year. The affects of the cotton gin gave America the opportunity to grow three-quarters of the world’s supply of cotton. This led America to enter a “cotton boom” era. “By 1800, seven years after Whitney’s invention, cotton production in the United States had increased 2300 % and continued to increase rather steadily… until production controls were imposed during the 1930s.” (Smith 8)
In the late 1700’s the slave population in the United States had decreased. Before the invention of the cotton gin the South, which could only make money by farming, was loosing money because it didn’t have a major crop to export to England and the North besides tobacco and rice. However, these crops could be grown elsewhere. Cotton was the key because it couldn’t be grown in large amounts in other places, but only one type of cotton that could be cleaned easily. This was long-staple cotton. Another problem arose; long-staple cotton only could be grown along the coast. There was another strain of cotton that until then could not be cleaned easily so it wasn’t worth growing. The cotton gin was the solution to this problem. With the invention of the cotton gin short stemmed cotton could be cleaned easily making cotton a valued export and it could be grown anywhere in the south. The era of the “Cotton Kingdom” began with this invention leading into an explosion in the necessity of slaves.
I’m going to stop here, since I am beginning to see small, easily fixable patterns in your writing. You’ve got a good paper going here, only requiring a few revisions to be truly great. Good job! 140/150
The 1930’s novel was set in a fictional Southern town called Maycomb County in Alabama. Maycomb could be classified as a safe town where “there was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go…..noting to see outside the boundaries….there was nothing to fear but fear itself” (...
In parts of the Southern United States, the fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith), often can be observed infesting grain sorghum that was planted later than normal. The infestations occur during the vegetative stages of development (Gardner et. al 1983). In North and South America, the fall armyworm is highly distributed (Sparks 1979). In crops such as cotton (Gossypium hirsutum), corn, (Zea mays), and many pasture grasses, it is considered an important pest and often needs to be controlled. Infestation during mid to late whorl stages can reduce grain yield, increase tillering, and decrease plant height (Henderson et al. 1966). Feeding injury fr...