We have all heard the commercials from Cotton Incorporated stating, cotton.

the fabric
of our lives. This statement is more than just a catchy tune about comfortable clothing. It is a
statement on how cotton itself helped influence American history and economics from slavery to
modern day cotton farms and how our lives are impacted by this powerful white lint. The exact
age of cotton is unknown but scientists in Mexico discovered cotton bolls that were shown to be
over 7000 years old. (AgroScience) Knowing this, the cotton industry and the impact it had on
the American economy seem infantile in age but as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. states in Why Cotton
was King, Understanding both how extraordinarily profitable cotton was and how
interconnected and overlapping were the economies of the cotton plantation, the Northern
banking industry, New England textile factories and a huge proportion of the economy of Great
Britain shows the reasons cotton became the first mass commodity (Henry Louis Gates) and
how slavery helped America grow economically.
The subject of slavery is still a hot button topic even in modern day discussions. It is
difficult to talk about the benefits that slave labor brought when so many people sacrificed and
suffered greatly in the cotton fields of the South. According to the textbook, European
immigration hastened the decline of white indentured servitude inherited from the colonial era.
A rising demand for labor drove up the price of non-free white labor compared to that of black
slaves; the supply of indentured whites was thus more restricted than that of blacks.
Consequently, slavery continued to grow as white servitude diminished. (Cain) The invention of
the cotton gin in 1793 helped to increase production and contributed to the demand of slave labor
in the southern cotton fields. When watching the video Modern Marvels, the technology behind
modern day harvesting of cotton has reduced the need for manual labor in the fields. When the
cotton gin came into play and made production faster, you would think that technology would

start taking the place of slave labor and you would see it diminish. Hughes made the point that
in 1794, 1.6 million pounds of cotton were exported but by 1800, the United States exported 18
million pounds, and a new way of life was about to begin. (Cain)
Although the slave trade was in place prior to the cotton boom, the real economics began
pre-Civil War when the exports of cotton were half of all export earnings. In an article written
by Gary Gallagher for the The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Gallagher states
by 1840, the South grew 60 percent of the world's cotton and provided some 70 percent of the
cotton consumed by the British textile industry. Thus slavery paid for a substantial share of the
capital, iron, and manufactured goods that laid the basis for American economic growth. In
addition, precisely because the South specialized in cotton production, the North developed a
variety of businesses that provided services for the slave South, including textile factories, a meat
processing industry, insurance companies, shippers, and cotton brokers (Gallagher) In Why
Was Cotton King Gates states that understanding both how extraordinarily profitable cotton
was and how interconnected and overlapping were the economies of the cotton plantation, the
Northern banking industry, New England textile factories and a huge proportion of the economy
of Great Britain helps us to understand why it was something of a miracle that slavery was
finally abolished in this country at all. (Henry Louis Gates)
Because of the great demand for exported cotton, there was the creation of Southern
Cotton Finance. The textbook explains how an intricate system of finance grew up, with agents
(factors) of British banks, discount houses, and cotton importers located throughout the cottongrowing and shipping portions of the South. (Cain) This meant there was money coming from
international sources. The South wasnt the only beneficiary of the cotton exports. Although the
North was usually at a deficit with England, the credit that England provided for the cotton

exports extended to the North who imported machinery and manufacturing equipment. This
allowed the north to build the manufacturing plants and textile mills. As Ronald Bailey showed,
cotton fed the textile revolution in the United States. In 1860, for example, New England had
52% of the manufacturing establishments and 75% of the 5.14 million spindles in operation.
(Bailey)
As mentioned earlier, slavery was a moral battle and one of the reasons the Civil War
started. According to Hughes, black slavery was historys intellectual handicap that scarred the
land of Jefferson and Madison. After the Civil War, the economic landscape changed. Cotton
prices plunged and slaves became emancipated leaving large plantations without free labor to
harvest the cotton. Plantation owners also lost money as they were not compensated for loss of
human property. The South plunged into poverty and the population shifted to the north and
westward. The Northern investors wanted to avoid the broken South and stayed away from
investing in their regions. This was the end of Southern Economics that was created by the
cotton trade.
By the 20th century, the creation of the automobile and the building of the railroad, the
economic despair started to fade away for the moment. Post-Civil War, the southern cotton crops
still had to be plowed, cultivated and harvested by hand. Sharecropping and population shifts
left the South in shambles. By the late 1800s, several people were working on inventions that
would mechanize cotton picking and put the South back on track. The idea was pick the open
cotton from the bolls using spindles, fingers, or prongs, without injuring the plants foliage and
unopened bolls. John Rust was eventually credited with inventing the mechanical cotton picker.
He found a way to remove the lint from the barbs. He eventually found a solution by licking a
nail and spinning it in the cotton. Modern Marvels also describes how modern day equipment

operates on that same process. The spindles turn and are moistened to prevent barbs from
remaining in the cotton. According to Donald Holley, a professor at University of Arkansas,
John Rust moved to the South and announced flatly, The sharecropper system of the Old South
will have to be abandoned. The Rust picker could do the work of between 50 and 100 hand
pickers, reducing labor needs by 75 percent. Rust expected to put the machine on the market
within a year. (Holley)
Many people feel that mechanization eliminates jobs and causes economic decline. With
the cotton industry, however, this was not the case. Using empirical data, Donald Holley
conducted an analysis to compare the impact of mechanization and manufacturing wages on the
labor available for picking cotton. The result showed that mechanization accounted for less than
40 percent of the decrease in handpicking, while the other 60 percent was attributed to the
decrease in the supply of labor caused by higher wages in manufacturing industries. Hand labor
was pulled out of the Cotton South by higher industrial wages rather than displaced by jobdestroying machines. (Holley)
World War II also brought economic change again to the South. The collapse of the
plantation system occurred and sharecropping dwindled. The number of farms decreased but the
size of the farm increased. Southern farmers will still farming cotton but they were moving into
other already mechanized crops such as rice and soybeans therefore diversifying their
agricultural economy. In the video Modern Marvels, the farm owner also diversifies his crops
rotating out cotton every two years to garlic, melons, or wheat. It is also interesting to note that
California is the largest producer of cotton in the United States followed by Texas. The old
cotton plantations of the South are now in the past.

Slavery is a deplorable time in United States History with racial divides still present
today rooted in years of oppression. Despite the deep wounds caused by slavery, to deny the
impact that slave labor had on the cotton industry and the economic domino effect it caused
would be a historical void. As the increase in demand for cotton grew, so did the increase in
demand for slave labor creating a seeming less never ending cycle. Gates states Understanding
both how extraordinarily profitable cotton was and how interconnected and overlapping were
the economies of the cotton plantation, the Northern banking industry, New England textile
factories and a huge proportion of the economy of Great Britain helps us to understand why it
was something of a miracle that slavery was finally abolished in this country at all. (Gates) Even
though there was the incentive to keep the economic boom going, there was the insight to realize
the immorality of our actions and stand up for emancipation despite the economic costs.

WORKS CITED

Cain, Johnathan Hughes & Louis P. American Economic History. Pearson Education, Inc., 2011.

Gallagher, Gary W. The American Civil War. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of
American History, n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2014. <http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history
-by-era/civil-war-and-reconstruction-1861-1877/american-civil-war>.

Holley, Donald. Mechanical Cotton Picker. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples.
June 16, 2003. URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/mechanical-cotton-picker/

Holley, Donald. The Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black
Migration, and How They Shaped the Modern South. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press,
2000

Jr., Henry Louis Gates. "Why Was Cotton 'King'?" The Root. N.p., 03 Feb. 2013. Web. 01 May
2016.

"National Cotton Council of America." National Cotton Council of America. Dow AgroSciences,
n.d. Web. 01 May 2016.