Cotton History

What is Cotton? Cotton, belonging to a  family that includes hibiscus and okra, produces a natural vegetable fiber used  in the manufacture of cloth. Cotton produces a sweet nectar that attracts a  variety of destructive insect pests, including the boll weevil, bollworm,  armyworm, and the red spider. In addition to insect pests, there is also a very  destructive fungus, called the wilt, that attacks the root system of the cotton  plant. Species. A few species  are grown commercially; these range from a small tree of Asia, to the common  American Upland cotton, a low, multibranched shrub that is grown as an annual.  Another species includes the long-fiber Egyptian and Sea Island cottons  botanically derived from the Egyptian species brought to the United States about  1900. Sea Island cotton thrives in the unique climate of the Sea Islands,  located off the southeastern coast of the United States, and on the islands of  the West Indies such as Barbados. As with Egyptian cotton, the fiber is white  and lustrous but its fiber length is longer than that of any other type of  cotton, which permits the spinning of extremely fine yarns. Pima, originally  called American-Egyptian cotton, is a hybrid type. It is the only variety of  long-fiber cotton now grown in commercially significant quantities in the United  States, where it is cultivated under irrigation in the Southwest. Foot Steps.It is almost impossible to  determine the original habitats of the various species of cotton. Scientists  have determined fiber and boll fragments from the Tehuacán Valley of Mexico to  be about 7000 years old. The plant has certainly been grown and used in India  for at least 5000 years and probably for much longer. Cotton was used also by  the ancient Chinese, Egyptians, and North and South Americans. It was one of the  earliest crops grown by European settlers, having been planted at the Jamestown  colony in 1607. Cotton was the most  important crop in South before the American Civil War (1861-1865). Slaves  usually worked all day picking cotton for their masters while overseers watched  from their horses. England was one of the South's largest cotton customers, many therefore Southerners believed England would enter the war on their behalf to preserve  England's supply of cotton. The South was confident this would assure a swift  Confederate victory. Cotton was king and Louisiana was queen! New Orleans was the major l9th-century  port for cotton export, and Louisiana's fertile valleys were the South's major  cotton producers. The Confederate government realized cotton was as good as if  not better than gold. Cotton's value gave Louisiana a major financial role  during the war. Not only did the Confederacy use the foreign exchange paid to  the South for the exported 1860 cotton crop, the Confederate government  purchased cotton to use both as security for European loans and for export. This plan worked until 1862 when the Union army occupied New Orleans and Baton  Rouge. Federal forces raided from Morgan City up to Alexandria. Vicksburg and  Port Hudson fell, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River. As Confederate troops retreated, they destroyed as much of the cotton crop as  possible, to prevent this "gold" from falling into enemy hands. The cotton gin,  invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney, was designed to separate raw cotton fibers from  seeds and other foreign materials prior to baling and marketing. The design was  so efficient that it remains virtually unchanged to the present day. American Eli Whitney  invents the cotton gin, a device that rapidly and effectively removes seeds from  cotton fiber. This task had previously been done by hand, making fiber  processing slow and expensive. The invention will help spur expansion of the  cotton industry in the southern United States. The South’s booming cotton  economy in turn will increase the reliance on slaves, owing to the  labor-intensive character of cotton harvesting. Although the invention  of the cotton gin changed history, its inventor, Eli Whitney, did not reap much  of a profit. The gin made cotton cleaning so efficient that the crop became a  primary enterprise for the South. However, patent disputes and supply problems  kept Whitney from successfully producing the cotton gin. His later venture into  arms manufacturing was more fruitful, and Whitney became a strong promoter of  mass production and interchangeable parts. The role of the cotton gin has changed dramatically  in the last 50 years to keep up with technological and production changes in the  cotton industry. At one time, the gin's only function was to remove cottonseed  from the fiber. Today, gins must not only separate the seed from the fiber, they  must also dry and clean the fiber and package it into bales before it reaches  the textile mill.  All gins differ in some aspects of the ginning  process. In the Southwest, for instance, gins are equipped with both saw and  roller gins: saw gins for ginning Upland cottons, and roller gins for ginning  Pima cotton, a cotton grown almost exclusively in this region of the Cotton  Belt. Elsewhere in the Cotton Belt, gins use only saw gins in their operation.