Cotton Industry

Cotton Industry. Cotton, the world's chief natural fiber for textile manufacturing and the principal ingredient in a variety of other products including foods and building materials, has figured prominently in American history. It played an important role in the growth of slavery in the American South and was the major export earner for the United States until around 1920. Since cotton requires semi‐tropical growing conditions, it was grown exclusively in the southern states until the early twentieth century, when it expanded westward into Arizona and California, and New Mexico.

The settlers of Jamestown brought cottonseed to the New World, but they were unable to produce the fiber in significant quantities. The lack of a technology able to separate the seed from the lint retarded the production of cotton. Planters along the southeastern tidewater belt grew small amounts of long‐staple “sea island” cotton, a variety with a longer fiber, but not enough for economic significance. When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, short‐staple cotton cultivation became economically feasible because farmers and planters could grow short‐staple or “upland” varieties in large quantities and supply the modernized textile industry in Europe, particularly Britain, the world leader in cotton‐textile production. By the early nineteenth century, cotton became so lucrative a crop that it was known as “white gold.” Settlers and planters spread across the South seeking fertile land. Planters used slaves to supply the intensive hand labor essential to cultivating the crop, and cotton growing became synonymous with slavery. The South produced much of the cotton that went into British and European textiles and brought much wealth to southern planters.

The Civil War ended slavery, but not cotton production. Indeed, cotton acreage increased, and by 1900 the U.S. production was over 10 million bales, twice the number grown in 1860. Cotton still created prosperity for large farmers and planters, but it too often caused poverty for small landowners, tenants, and sharecroppers. Small, self‐sufficient farmers typically devoted some acres to cotton as a meager source of cash, but most tenants and sharecroppers fared even worse because they had too little land. As world production increased in the late nineteenth century, cotton prices declined and profits became harder to achieve, even for many large landowners. Adding to cotton growers' woes, the boll weevil, and destructive boring beetle, migrated from Mexico to Texas in the 1890s and gradually invaded the entire cotton belt. Production fell, many cotton workers were displaced, and southern agriculture diversified, but cotton remained the predominant crop. Insecticides and other control methods helped, but boll weevil depredations remained a chronic problem.

The economics of cotton cultivation worsened after World War I as U.S. production expanded owing to improved varieties and cultivation practices as well as the greater production in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and especially Texas. By 1932 world production surpassed 23,000,000 bales, of which the U.S. portion was 13,000,000, glutting the cotton market. The price for American cotton fell below 10 cents per pound, the lowest level since the 1890s, and growers suffered severe hardship. Producers of other agricultural staples such as wheat and corn also faced saturated markets, but the severity of the economic depression in southern cotton‐growing areas created the greatest human distress. To alleviate these conditions, theAgricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 offered subsidized cotton prices in exchange for mandatory crop reduction to limit supply. Surpluses persisted, however, thanks to greater foreign production and the increased use of synthetics in textile manufacturing.

Post–World War II changes further transformed cotton cultivation. Mechanization, particularly in weed control and harvesting, displaced great numbers of cotton laborers and sharecroppers, spurring southern urbanization and the migration of millions of white and black southerners to the North and West. The number of landowning cotton farmers also fell, from over 1 million in 1945 to approximately 30,000 by 2000. Yet total U.S. production at the end of the twentieth century remained high because of improved seed genetics and machinery, the expansion of irrigation, and new technologies to control the boll weevil and other insects.

At century's end, overproduction remained the cotton industry's fundamental problem. Growers continued to wrestle with low prices and to rely heavily on exports. Synthetics still held a large share of the fabric market, and cotton textile imports reduced the domestic market for raw cotton. While continuing to rely on various forms of federal support, the industry also conducted research and engaged in promotion activities to expand its market. Despite the industry's problems, cotton remained a viable crop and an important component of U.S. agriculture as the new century began.
See also African Americans; Clothing and Fashion; Foreign Trade, U.S.; Industrialization; Lowell Mills; New England; Sharecropping and Tenantry.

Bibliography

Harry Brown , Cotton: History, Species, Varieties, Morphology, Breeding, Culture, Disease, Marketing, and Uses, 1938.
Gilbert C. Fite , Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865–1980, 1984.
Pete Daniel , Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880, 1985.
Devra Weber , Dark Sweat, White Gold: California Farmworkers, Cotton and the New Deal, 1994.
C. Wayne Smith and J. Tom Cothren, eds., Cotton: Origin, History, Technology, and Production, 1999.

D. Clayton Brown