cotton is a natural vegetable fiber of great economic importance as a raw material for cloth. Its widespread use is largely due to the ease with which its fibers are spun into yarns. Cotton's strength, absorbency, and capacity to be washed and dyed also make it adaptable to a considerable variety of textile products. In fact, cotton can be made into more kinds of products -- from diapers to explosives -- than any other fiber.
Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. This machine made it possible to remove the cotton seeds from the fibers more cheaply. With it, one person could do the work once done by 50 persons picking out seeds by hand. Before the American Civil War, cotton ranked as the only important crop of the South. Cotton still ranks as a major source of income for Southern farmers, but they also raise a variety of other crops.
The Cotton Plant
Cotton is produced by small trees and shrubs of the genus Gossypium, of the family Malvaceae, which also includes hibiscus, Okra, and the swamp mallow. The plant grows upright and has branches spreading in all directions. It has broad leaves with three to five lobes, and a taproot that may grow as deep as 4 feet into the ground.
White flowers blossom from the squares (buds) approximately five to seven weeks after planting. The flowers open in midmorning and begin to wither the next day. They turn pink, blue, and finally purple as they dry and fall off the plant. The flowers must be pollinated during the few hours they remain open. Cotton flowers usually pollinate themselves.
At first, only one or two flowers open each day. The first flowers bloom low on the plant, near the main stem. As the plant become larger, several flowers open daily. These flowers open higher on the plant and farther out on the branches. Flowering starts in summer and may last until the autumn frosts.
The boll, which contains the cotton fibers, begins to form while the flower withers. A boll matures in 45 to 60 days, during which time it grows to about the size of a Golf ball. At full size, it is green and almost round, with a pointed tip. At this stage, the boll cracks in four or five straight lines from the tip. Then it splits open, showing four or five locks (groups of 8 to 10 seeds with fibers attached). The open dried boll, which holds the fluffed-out cotton, is called the bur. An average boll will contain nearly 500,000 fibers of cotton and each plant may bear up to 100 bolls.
made on a pland from alex breakwell
Huge amounts of it were grown and most of the economy of the south was from money made from selling it. Sugar cane was also an important source of income.
The cotton gin- a machine for removing seeds from raw cotton quickly and cheaply- and the spinning jenny- a machine that would spin cotton fiber into thread. Together with the power loom (used to weave cloth from thread) it greatly increased cheap production of cotton cloth- and increased the demand for cotton.
Rice was not a cash crop for the southern colonies but tobacco, indigo, and corn wheat were. In addition, perhaps the biggest cash crop grown in the southern colonies was cotton. The South grew to rely so heavily on cotton and the money it generated that it began to direct their society, leading to the Southern dependence on slavery.
the cotton gin, made by Whitney
the fact that you needed many workers for the main cash crop in the south. The main cash crop in the south used to be cotton
Because the invention of the cotton-gin had made it easy to harvest, and there was a limitless world demand for cotton products.
made on a pland from alex breakwell
Huge amounts of it were grown and most of the economy of the south was from money made from selling it. Sugar cane was also an important source of income.
The cotton gin- a machine for removing seeds from raw cotton quickly and cheaply- and the spinning jenny- a machine that would spin cotton fiber into thread. Together with the power loom (used to weave cloth from thread) it greatly increased cheap production of cotton cloth- and increased the demand for cotton.
It made the south's dependence on slave labor even greater. Before the cotton gin, cotton had to be hand-carded, to try to get the seeds out of the cotton bolls. This was a slow, labor-intensive process, and cotton was not a popular crop. After the cotton gin, the bolls could easily be deseeded, and cotton quickly became a staple crop of large scale plantation operators. The cotton grew best in the deep south, which was just being settled. Importation of new slaves was forbidden after 1808, so slaves were purchased in the upper south, where tobacco lands were played out, and sent south ("sold down the river") to toil in the new cotton belt area. Large plantation operators made fortunes selling the new crop to the new mills, which were just being developed, to weave the cotton into cloth. Rich people tend to have disproportionate political power, and since they had made their money using slaves to grow cotton, they naturally tended to defend the system which had made them wealthy.
The combination of the cotton gin and slave labor made cotton a profitable crop for plantation-style agriculture.
In the early period the cash crop was tobacco. By 1850, it was cotton, which made the South very prosperous when it came to money. From this came the expression "Cotton is king!"
The cotton gin was popular at the south. The south used it a lot because that is where most of the crops and cotton grew. They used the cotton gin to grow cotton but then it was hard to clean the cotton gin. This should help not the one before!!!!!
Rice was not a cash crop for the southern colonies but tobacco, indigo, and corn wheat were. In addition, perhaps the biggest cash crop grown in the southern colonies was cotton. The South grew to rely so heavily on cotton and the money it generated that it began to direct their society, leading to the Southern dependence on slavery.
Cotton! The US Civil War was fought over natural resources: primarily cotton which grew in the South and was made into cloth in the factories in the North, when the Southern cotton producers found out that the Brits would pay more for the cotton they stopped selling to the Northern States and the North invaded the South to reclaim the cotton for their textile mills. Tobacco
The cotton crops in the south. It made them turn to an alternative crop which was better and made more money. Peanuts. There is a statue of a boll weevil in downtown Enterprise Alabama paying tribute to the insect that brought them the money-crop peanuts.