Spindle pickers are used in areas of high rainfall where plants grow tall before they are defoliated. By 1850, of the 3.2 million slaves in the countrys fifteen slave states, 1.8 million were producing cotton; by 1860, slave labor was producing over two billion pounds of cotton per year. Cotton farming was also subsidized in the country by the U.S. government[citation needed], as a trade policy, specifically to the "corporate agribusiness" almost ruined the economy of people in many underdeveloped countries such as Mali and many other developing countries (in view of low profits in the light of stiff competition from the United States, the workers could hardly make both ends meet to survive with cotton sales). Following the War of 1812, cotton became the key cash crop of the southern economy and the most important American commodity. When the delegates wrote and agreed upon the Constitution, cotton production was virtually nonexistent in America. "Globalization and Its Effects on Agriculture and Agribusiness in the Mississippi Delta: A Historical Overview and Prospects for the Future. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. The Economics of Cotton - U.S. History Mississippi did not exist in a vacuum. New York City, not just Southern cities, was essential to the cotton world. Seventy-five percent of the cotton that supplied Britains cotton mills came from the American South, and the labor that produced that cotton came from the enslaved. What does Northups narrative tell you about the experience of being a slave? Cotton production continued its steady increase until the 1920s, Post navigation. Horses or mules pulled the sled through the fields to harvest the cotton. In the eastern part of the state, cotton is planted mostly on medium-high beds to allow better drainage and to enable the soil to warm up quicker in the spring, while in West Texas and other sections with low rainfall, cotton is planted below the level of the land. The state was swept along by the global economic force created by its cotton production, the demand by cotton textile manufacturing in Europe, and New Yorks financial and commercial dealings. Cotton production in Mississippi exploded from nothing in 1800 to 535.1 million pounds in 1859; Alabama ranked second with 440.5 million pounds. Southern planters also borrowed money from banks in northern cities, and in the southern summers, took advantage of the developments in transportation to travel to resorts at Saratoga, New York; Litchfield, Connecticut; and Newport, Rhode Island. 4,000,000 or four million bales of cotton were produced in the 1860's. At least that is what I read. The 1914-1915 season totaled 16.5 million bales. Cotton was a labor-intensive business, and the large number of workers required to grow and harvest cotton came from slave labor until the end of the American Civil War. In terms of yield, Missouri yielded a record low of 281 pounds/acre in 1957 and a record high of 1,097 pounds/acre in 2015. While tobacco was a labor-intensive crop that required many people to cultivate it, wheat was not. Suddenly, a process that was extraordinarily labor-intensive when done by hand could be completed quickly and easily. Contemporary uses include fertilizer, paper, tires, cake and meal for cattle feed, and cottonseed oil for cooking, paint, and lubricants. The U.S. cotton crop nearly doubled, from 2.1 million bales in 1850 to 3.8 million bales ten years later. This economic growth exacted a severe and tragic human price through slavery and the prejudicial treatment of free Black people. Northern mills depended on the South for supplies of raw cotton that was then converted into textiles. 12. Indeed, the number of southern cotton bales exported to Europe dropped from 3 million bales in 1860 to mere thousands. Exporting at such high volumes made the United States the undisputed world leader in cotton production. Though these methods were faster, however, they both resulted in cotton with a high trash content that brought a much lower price than hand-picked or hand-snapped cotton. Cotton cultivation was begun by Anglo-American colonists in 1821. The seed are planted from one to two inches deep, the depth depending upon the condition of the soil and the amount of moisture present at planting time. PDF TT 25 The Americans Test Practice Transparency CHART Data Chart Auctions of cheap Indian lands as a result of cessions of land by the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations drew bidders from the South and East. Solomon Northup was a free black man living in Saratoga, New York, when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. How did the invention of the cotton gin affect the economies of the North and South in the years between 1800 and 1850? Mississippi and its neighbors Alabama, western Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas provided the cheap land that was suitable for cotton production. Then you can access your favorite statistics via the star in the header. This spacing helps to make the plants fruit earlier than would a wider spacing and usually results in higher yields. The boll weevil arrived four years later. ", History of agriculture in the United States, "National Cotton Council of America Rankings", "Ranking of States That Produce the Most Cotton", "Leading destinations of U.S. cotton textile exports", Xiuzhi Wang, Edward A. Evans, and Fredy H. Ballen, "Overview of US Agricultural Trade with China", "USDA/NASS 2020 State Agriculture Overview for South Carolina", "Cotton in a Global Economy: Mississippi (1800-1860)", "Missouri Cotton Facts - Missouri Crop Resource Guide", "Crops - Planted, Harvested, Yield, Production, Price (MYA), Value of Production Sorted by Value of Production in Dollars", Missouri Cotton Facts. [1] Almost all of the cotton fiber growth and production occurs in the Southern United States and the Western United States, dominated by Texas, California, Arizona, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. A great deal of Texas cotton is exported, especially to Japan and South Korea. This excerpt derives from Northups description of being sold in New Orleans, along with fellow slave Eliza and her children Randall and Emily. ", Snow, Whitney Adrienne. Whitney never seemed, as one historian noted, to care about slavery one way or the other.. [30] In Japan, especially Texas cotton is very highly regarded as its strong fibers lend themselves perfectly to low tension weaving. As the cotton industry boomed in the South, the Mississippi River quickly became the essential water highway in the United States. The module is covered with a polyethelene tarpaulin and marked for field identification with a harmless spray. Visit the Internet Archive to watch a 1937 WPA film showing cotton bales being loaded onto a steamboat. As a Premium user you get access to the detailed source references and background information about this statistic. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1986, North, Douglass C. Economic Growth of the United States: 1790-1860. In addition to dominating the slave trade, New York denied voting rights to its small free Black population, which comprised only one percent of the population. Beginning in 1872, thousands of immigrants from the Deep South and from Europe poured into the Blackland Prairie of Central Texas and began growing cotton. By 1850, of the 3.2 million enslaved people in the country's fifteen slave states, 1.8 million were producing cotton. Cotton from strippers or spindle pickers is emptied directly into the box, and an operator in the cab compresses the cotton with the tramper. The crop grown in the South was a hybrid: Gossypium barbadense, known as Petit Gulf cotton, a mix of Mexican, Georgia, and Siamese strains. Cotton was first grown in Texas by Spanish missionaries. Over the centuries, cotton became a staple crop in American agriculture. Because of a shortage of laborers and the destructiveness of sudden storms, cotton growers in the Lubbock area developed a means of rough-harvesting cotton during the 1920s. This is a drop of over 5 million bales from the previous year. As soon as this statistic is updated, you will immediately be notified via e-mail. In 1990, 74 percent of the Texas cotton crop was gathered by strippers and 26 percent by spindle pickers. Other combined counties in Missouri produced 15,800 bales in 2016. Handbook of Texas Online, Mississippi was, therefore, both a captive of the cotton world and a major player in the 19th century global economy. [32] With eight production regions around Texas, and only four geographic regions, it is the state's leading cash crop. Print from The Illustrated London News courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-64405. Technology and a world demand for cotton products, however, could not offset the devastation of the boll weevil. Further innovations in the form of genetic engineering and of nanotechnology are an encouraging development for the growth of cotton. On September 25, 1961, Herbert Lee, a black cotton farmer and voter-registration organizer, was shot in the head and killed by white state legislator E. H. Hurst in Liberty, Mississippi. Farmers first saw the ravaging effect of the weevil, which had spread northward from Mexico, near Corpus Christi during the 1890s. In 1884 Robert S. Munger of Mexia revolutionized the slow, animal-powered method of "plantation ginning" by devising the faster, automated "system ginning," the process in use today. Some of the newcomers bought small farmsteads, but most worked as tenant farmers or sharecroppers for landowners who controlled spreads as large as 6,000 acres. His first book, The Sun That Never Rose, predicted Japan's economic stagnation in the 1990s. About how many millions of bales of cotton were produced in the south Mapping History : The Spread of Cotton and of Slavery 1790-1860 [13] 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. His next book, Cotton and Race in America (1787-1930): The Human Price of Economic Growth, will be published in 2007. [5] Cotton supports the global textile mills market and the global apparel manufacturing market that produces garments for wide use, which were valued at USD 748 billion and 786 billion, respectively, in 2016. One thing, however, was clear cotton was bringing a good price, . Indeed, slaves often maintained their own gardens and livestock, which they tended after working the cotton fields, in order to supplement their supply of food. He had obtained a patent on the cotton gin but it proved to be unenforceable. [22], The cotton industry in the United States hit a crisis in the early 1920s. Nevertheless, Georgians raised 500,000 bales in 1850, second only to Alabama, and nearly 702,000 bales in 1860, behind Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. We'll send you a couple of emails per month, filled with fascinating history facts that you can share with your friends. It may be sent to United States Department of Agriculture classing offices in various parts of the state. It expanded to the west very dramatically after 1800all the way to Texasthanks to the cotton gin. Thus, the market revolution transformed the South just as it had other regions. Available: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191500/cotton-production-in-the-us-since-2000/, Cotton production in the U.S. from 2001 to 2022 (in 1,000 bales)*, Immediate access to statistics, forecasts & reports, Total U.S. cotton plantings and harvestings 2001-2022, U.S. acreage of planted cotton 2015/16-2021/22, U.S. acreage of harvested cotton 2015/16-2021/22, U.S. acreage of genetically modified cotton 2014-2019, Cotton production value in the U.S. 2000-2022, Leading U.S. states based on cotton production value 2021, Cottonseed production in the U.S. 2001-2022, U.S. cottonseed production value 2000-2021, Supply of cottonseed products in the U.S. 2016/17-2018/19, U.S. cottonseed oil consumption 2000-2021, Exports of cottonseed from the U.S. 2016/17-2018/19, Exports of cottonseed oil from the U.S. 2016/17-2018/19, Cotton production in China 2021, by region, Share of cotton in China's agricultural acreage 2000-2017, Brazil: harvested area of cotton 2022-2031, Area of sorghum for grain harvested in the U.S. 2001-2022, U.S. plantings and harvestings of oats 2001-2022, U.S. barley plantings and harvestings 2001-2022, Yield per harvested acre of corn for silage in the U.S. 2001-2022, Area of sunflowers planted and harvested 2001-2022, Global cottonseed meal and oil production 2009-2018, Cotton production volume in Egypt 2007-2022, Black winter truffle: volume harvested by production countries in the EU 2012-2016, Truffle distribution in France 2014, by country, Wild harvest area in India from FY 2011-2022, Total area harvested for barley production across the UAE 2014 to 2018, Import value of cotton in Ghana 2010-2019, Production volume of castor oil seeds in India FY 2012-2020, Canada: harvested seeded area of chickpeas 2016/17-2022/23, Import value of cotton into Ethiopia 2015-2021, Find your information in our database containing over 20,000 reports, top producer of cotton in the United States. For many slaves, the domestic slave trade incited the terror of being sold away from family and friends. Eugene R. Dattel, a Mississippi native and economic historian, is a former international investment banker. Soon after the signing of the Constitution, cotton unexpectedly intervened in the 1790s and changed the course of Americas economic and racial future because of the simultaneous occurrence of two events: the mass production of textiles and the mass production of cotton. Factors that caused the decline of cotton production in the state after the 1920s were the federal government's control program, which cut acreage in half, the increase in foreign production (the state had been exporting approximately 85 percent of the total crop), the introduction of synthetic fibers, the tariff, the lack of a lint-processing industry in Texas, and World War II, which brought a shortage of labor and disrupted commerce. The effort was laborious, and a white driver employed the lash to make slaves work as quickly as possible. Cotton and the Growth of the American Economy: 1790-1860. New York: Russell & Russell, Publishers, 1968, Green, Fletcher Melvin. and The trade with the South, which has been estimated at $200,000,000 annually, was an impressive sum at the time. The ideal entry-level account for individual users. Planting too early often results in stunted plants, poor stands, and lower yields. The United States exports more cotton than any other country, though it ranks third in total production, behind China and India.