Cotton Field Harvested
by Rob Hemphill
Title
Cotton Field Harvested
Artist
Rob Hemphill
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
A recently harvested field of cotton with bales awaiting collection near Kinston, North Carolina in the United States.
Cotton has been planted and cultured in the United States since before the American Revolution, especially in South Carolina. It expanded to the west very dramatically after 1800, all the way to Texas, thanks to the cotton gin.
Plantation owners brought mass supplies of labor (slaves) from Africa and the Caribbean to hoe and harvest the crop. Prior to the U.S. Civil War, cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. It was by far the nation's main export, providing the basis for the rapidly growing cotton textile industry in Britain and France, as well as the Northeastern United States.
After the Civil War, cotton production expanded to small farms, operated by white and black tenant farmers and sharecroppers. The quantity exported held steady, at 3,000,000 bales, but prices on the world market fell. Although there was some work involved in planting the seeds, and cultivating or holding out the weeds, the critical labor input for cotton was in the picking. How much a cotton operation could produce depended on how many hands (men women and children) were available.
Finally in the 1950s, new mechanical harvesters allowed a handful of workers to pick as much as 100 had done before. The result was a large-scale exodus of the white and black cotton farmers from the south. By the 1970s, most cotton was grown in large automated farms in the Southwest.
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Featured in the following FAA Groups:
"10 Plus" 07/05/2020
"Daily Promotion" 07/02/2020
"Only Doors and Windows Photography" 07/01/2020
"Hodge Podge" 07/01/2020
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Uploaded
July 1st, 2020
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