The lint is baled in a universal-density press that eliminates the need for the old-fashioned compress, and the bale is packaged in synthetic bagging. In 1857, seventy-five percent of Connecticut voters elected to deny suffrage to African Americans, and even after the Civil War, voters there again denied Black male residents the right to vote. Cotton provoked a gold rush by attracting thousands of White men from the North and from older slave states along the Atlantic coast who came to make a quick fortune. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1986, North, Douglass C. Economic Growth of the United States: 1790-1860. As a Premium user you get access to background information and details about the release of this statistic. Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841 and Rescued in 1853 (the basis of a 2013 Academy Awardwinning film). [37], From 1817, when it became a state, to 1860 Mississippi was the largest cotton-producing state in the United States. By the 1970s, most cotton was grown in large automated farms in the Southwest. The introduction of barbed wire in the 1870s and the building of railroads further stimulated the industry. [3], The average production of lint per acre in 1914 was estimated by the United States Department of Agriculture to be 209 pounds, a nominal change from 1911 when it was 208 pounds. If you change your mind, you can easily unsubscribe. Many of the trappings of domestic life, such as carpets, lamps, dinnerware, upholstered furniture, books, and musical instrumentsall the accoutrements of comfortable living for southern whiteswere made in either the North or Europe. The 1889 census reported 3,934,525 acres producing 1.5 million bales. By the end of this section, you will be able to: A project created by ISKME. [29] Cotton exports to China grew from a value of $46 million in 2000 to more than $2 billion in 2010. While in 1987, Arizona was producing 66% of the countrys Pima cotton, it has dropped to only 2% in recent years. "Cotton Mill City: The Huntsville Textile Industry, 1880-1989. Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the United States, the boll weevil, a pest from Mexico, began to spread across the United States, affecting yields drastically as it moved east. Cotton and tobacco prices collapsed in 1920 following overproduction and the boll weevil pest wiped out the sea island cotton crop in 1921. ", 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. By 1860, Georgia alone produced 701,840 bales of cotton, establishing it as the fourth-largest cotton-growing state. On the eve of the Civil War, almost 1/3rd of . [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. Georgia produced a record 2.8 million bales on 4.9 million acres in 1911. [23] Although the industry was badly affected by falling prices and pests in the early 1920s, the main reason is undoubtedly the mechanization of agriculture in explaining why many blacks moved to northern American cities in the 1940s and 1950s during the "Great Migration" as mechanization of agriculture was introduced, leaving many unemployed. Not only were the fibers sold, but also the cottonseed was crushed for cooking oil, hulls were converted to cattle feed, and portions of the plant were used to make an early type of plastic. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-49307. A report of the missions at San Antonio in 1745 indicates that several thousand pounds of cotton were produced annually, then spun and woven by mission craftsmen. Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) ", Meikle, Paulette Ann. The key is that cotton and slaves helped define each other, at least in the cotton South. West Texas farmers usually plant a smaller quantity of seed per acre than East Texas growers. The Mississippi River Valley slave states became the epicenter of cotton production, an area of frantic economic activity where the landscape changed dramatically as land was transformed from pinewoods and swamps into cotton fields. 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. ", Snow, Whitney Adrienne. ", Sven Beckert, "Emancipation and empire: Reconstructing the worldwide web of cotton production in the age of the American Civil War. (January 12, 2023). 720,000, 2.85 million, 5 million By the civil war how much did cotton account for American exports? Cotton cultivation was begun by Anglo-American colonists in 1821. TSHA | Cotton Culture The Civil War (1861-65) dramatically changed the state's agricultural labor force by freeing thousands of enslaved laborers, but cotton continued to be the main crop in many parts of Georgia. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, many former tenants and sharecroppers returned to farmwork, but after the United States entered World War II in 1941, farmworkers moved again to the cities for work in war-related industries. Currently, you are using a shared account. Learn more about how Statista can support your business. Investors poured huge sums into steamships. [citation needed]. Cotton compresses, huge machines that reduced 500-pound bales to about half their ginned, or flat-bale, size for convenience in shipping, were constructed along railroad rights-of-way in many towns. By 1860, New York had become the capital of the South because of its dominant role in the cotton trade. In 1879 some 2,178,435 acres produced 805,284 bales. The first half of the nineteenth century saw a market revolution in the United States, one in which industrialization brought changes to both the production and the consumption of goods. Cotton was dependent on slavery and slavery was, to a large extent, dependent on cotton. If the land has any appreciable slope, it should be terraced or contoured to prevent soil erosion and conserve water. Exporting at such high volumes made the United States the undisputed world leader in cotton production. Whitney never seemed, as one historian noted, to care about slavery one way or the other.. Whenever new slave states entered the Union, white slaveholders sent armies of slaves to clear the land in order to grow and pick the lucrative crop. U.S. History, Cotton is King: The Antebellum South, 1800-1860, The In the early part of this period, many of these slaves were sold to people living in Kentucky, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina. By the 1820s, however, people in Kentucky and the Carolinas had begun to sell many of their slaves as well. Enslaved people were transported in a massive forced migration over land and by sea from the older slave states to the newer cotton states. 1800-1810 In these spaces, whites socialized in the ships saloons and dining halls while black slaves served them (Figure). [2] Cotton production is a $21billion-per-year industry in the United States, employing over 125,000 people in total,[1] as against growth of forty billion pounds a year from 77 million acres of land covering more than eighty countries. The abolition of the foreign slave trade in 1807 led to _______. Business Solutions including all features. Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License. For example, in the 1830s, the largest purchasers of Chickasaw land in Mississippi were the American Land Company and the New York Land Company. From there, the bulk of American cotton went to Liverpool, England, where it was sold to British manufacturers who ran the cotton mills in Manchester and elsewhere. Visit the Internet Archive to watch a 1937 WPA film showing cotton bales being loaded onto a steamboat. In 1849 a census of the cotton production of the state reported 58,073 bales (500 pounds each). [7] These bales usually measure approximately 17 cubic feet (0.48 cubic meters) and weigh 500 pounds (230 kilograms). These bales, weighing about four hundred to five hundred pounds, were wrapped in burlap cloth and sent down the Mississippi River. US Department of Agriculture. The most notable change in the production of cotton in the twentieth century was the geographical shift from East and Central Texas to the High Plains and the Rio Grande valley. In 1910, it was released into the marketplace. Horses or mules pulled the sled through the fields to harvest the cotton. Furthermore, cotton supports a USD 3 trillion global fashion industry, which includes clothes with unique designs from reputed brands, with global clothing exports valued at USD 1.3 trillion in 2016. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/cotton-culture. Spindle pickers are used in areas of high rainfall where plants grow tall before they are defoliated. [43], Missouri grows upland cotton, and cottonseed, which is a valuable livestock feed. Study guide Flashcards | Quizlet [23] In South Carolina, Williamsburg County production fell from 37,000 bales in 1920 to 2,700 bales in 1922 and one farmer in McCormick County produced 65 bales in 1921 and just 6 in 1922. 60%, $200 million a year from it January 8th 1808 A bill to abolish the importation of slaves became a law Cotton dictated the Souths huge role in a global economy that included Europe, New York, other New England states, and the American west. Although the importation of enslaved Africans into the United States had been prohibited in 1808, the temptation of the astronomical profits of the international slave trade was too strong for many New Yorkers. How many slaves a year escaped to freedom? 3 million. How many bales of cotton did the south produce In 1830,1850,1860? [22], The cotton industry in the United States hit a crisis in the early 1920s. 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. From the time of its gaining statehood in 1817 to 1860, Mississippi became the most dynamic and largest cotton-producing state in America. a. It also fostered an enormous domestic trade in agricultural products from the West and manufactured goods from the East. 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. Some southerners of the time believed that their regions reliance on a single cash crop and its use of slaves to produce it gave the South economic independence and made it immune from the effects of these changes, but this was far from the truth. It expanded to the west very dramatically after 1800all the way to Texasthanks to the cotton gin. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. How many bales of cotton were produced in Georgia? After the seeds had been removed, the cotton was pressed into bales. Most New Yorkers did not care that the cotton was produced by enslaved people because for them it became sanitized once it left the plantation. Karen Gerhardt Britton, Profit from the additional features of your individual account. Data prior to 2020 have been taken from previous reports. In the antebellum erathat is, in the years before the Civil WarAmerican planters in the South continued to grow Chesapeake tobacco and Carolina rice as they had in the colonial era. The United States exports more cotton than any other country, though it ranks third in total production, behind China and India. Some western states, such as Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, tried to exclude African Americans at the same time they were aggressively recruiting millions of White European immigrants. Cotton production in the U.S. 2022 | Statista In the late 18th century, the process started in Great Britain where several inventions the spinning jenny, Cromptons spinning mule, and Cartwrights power loom revolutionized the textile industry. Fortunately for Americans whose wealth depended upon the exploitation of slave labor, a fall in the price of tobacco had caused landowners in the Upper South to reduce their production of this crop and use more of their land to grow wheat, which was far more profitable. He had obtained a patent on the cotton gin but it proved to be unenforceable. [36], In the late 19th and early 20th century, federal agricultural engineers worked in the Arizona Territory on an experimental farm in Sacaton. Nearly 4,000,000 of Britains total population of 21,000,000 were dependent on cotton textile manufacturing. Cotton planters projected the amount of cotton they could harvest based on the number of slaves under their control. Other white men could benefit from the trade as owners of warehouses and pens in which slaves were held, or as suppliers of clothing and food for slaves on the move. upon the Southern mind before 1860 that it became within itself a cause to be defended. A good spacing is about twelve inches between plants, with one or two plants per hill. Southern black cotton farmers faced discrimination and strikes often broke out by black cotton farmers. Fred C. Elliott, By 1840, New Orleans alone had 12 percent of the nations total banking capital, and visitors often commented on the great cultural diversity of the city. 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. On the eve of the Civil War, cotton provided the economic underpinnings of the Southern economy. In the 1990s cotton was also planted in the Sacramento Valley. The United States is the world's top exporter of cotton. Thus, the delegates faced the question: should there be a United States with slavery, or no United States without slavery? The slaves day didnt end after they picked the cotton; once they had brought it to the gin house to be weighed, they then had to care for the animals and perform other chores. Between 1790 and 1859, slaveholders in Virginia sold more than half a million slaves. Visit the Internet Archive to watch a 1937 WPA film showing cotton bales being loaded onto a steamboat. Social pressures caused by returning African American WWI veterans demanding increased civil rights being met by a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and the violence the Klan inflicted on rural African Americans explains why many African Americans moved to northern American cities in the 1920s through the 1950s during the "Great Migration" as mechanization of agriculture was introduced, leaving many unemployed. As the chief crop[citation needed], the southern part of the United States prospered thanks to its slavery-dependent economy. The 1914-1915 season totaled 16.5 million bales. Cotton - New Georgia Encyclopedia Legal Notices. Some slaveholders responded to this situation by freeing slaves; far more decided to sell their excess bondsmen. Cottonseed production was less valuable that year in terms of dollar value, with a total production being 255,000 tons valued at $39,824,000 ($152/ton). The Souths dependence on cotton was matched by its dependence on slaves to harvest the cotton. Much of the corn and pork that slaves consumed came from farms in the West. According to the University of Missouri, cotton production per acreage in this state peaked in the 1953 and decreased to its lowest point in 1967. Seventy percent of that crop was ginned from modules, and 30 percent from trailers. Please do not hesitate to contact me. In 1879 some 2,178,435 acres produced 805,284 bales. As early as 1813, nitrocellulose, or gun cotton, for explosives was made from raw cotton. This astonishing increase in supply did not cause a long-term decrease in the price of cotton. Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). New York: Russell & Russell, Publishers, 1968, Green, Fletcher Melvin. [26] A report published by the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service ranked the highest cotton-producing states of 2020 as Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, California, and North Carolina.[27]. About how many millions of bales of cotton were produced in the south His next book, Cotton and Race in America (1787-1930): The Human Price of Economic Growth, will be published in 2007. Sadly for Whitney, the cotton gin generated no profits because other manufacturers copied his design without paying him fees. Connecticuts Roger Sherman, one of the delegates who brokered the slavery compromise, assumed that the evil of slavery was dying out and would by degrees disappear. He also thought that it was best to let the individual states decide about the legality of slavery. [44][45][46][47], Cotton growing is largely confined to a county near the westernmost tip of the state[citation needed]. The Role of the Yankee in the Old South. a dramatic decrease in the price and demand for slaves, the rise of a thriving domestic slave trade, a reform movement calling for the complete end to slavery in the United States. Mechanical strippers, which followed, pulled the boll off the plant by means of revolving rollers or brushes. As the price of cotton increased to 9, 10, then 11 per pound over the next ten years, the average cost of an enslaved male laborer likewise rose to $775, $900, and then more than $1,600. Once the cotton grower or producer knows the class and value of his cotton, he sells it to buyers around the world by means of computers. [10] Prior to the U.S. Civil War, cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. Although the industry was badly affected by falling prices and pests in the early 1920s, the mechanization of agriculture created additional pressures on those working in the industry. Cotton from strippers or spindle pickers is emptied directly into the box, and an operator in the cab compresses the cotton with the tramper. Every penny counts! These bales, weighing about four hundred to five hundred pounds, were wrapped in burlap cloth and sent down the Mississippi River. The module is covered with a polyethelene tarpaulin and marked for field identification with a harmless spray. The boll weevil arrived four years later. E. A. Miller, Primary, cotton - related items manufactured in the late 1850s included gunny cloth, hoop iron for cotton bales, and cotton machinery. Boston: Little Brown, 1986, Bruchey, Stuart. University of Oklahoma, 2002, Copyright 2023 Mississippi Historical Society Cotton and the Civil War - 2008-07 Indeed, American cotton soon made up two-thirds of the global supply, and production continued to soar. This particular chapter of the story of slavery in the United States starts at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a Premium user you get access to the detailed source references and background information about this statistic. Show publisher information How did the invention of the cotton gin affect the economies of the North and South in the years between 1800 and 1850? The industry faces challenges from increases in cotton production elsewhere where US cotton exports had gone and shifts to less expensive synthetic fibers, such as polyesters. The Vital Few: The Entrepreneur & American Economic Progress. Advertisement. In 1990, 74 percent of the Texas cotton crop was gathered by strippers and 26 percent by spindle pickers. Over 50% of the Santa Rosa County's harvest is of cotton. [40], The top four upland cotton producing counties in Missouri are New Madrid (197,000 bales in 2016), Dunklin (171,200 bales in 2016), Stoddard (110,000 bales in 2016), and Pemiscot (72,000 bales in 2016). By the 1850s, slavery and cotton had become so intertwined . Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787. This socially enforced debt peonage, known as the crop-lien system, began after the Civil War and continued in practice until the 1930s. In 1793, the fledgling mechanic soon found a solution to the problem of cleaning cotton and the separation of the seed from the fiber. Over the centuries, cotton became a staple crop in American agriculture. Fred C. Elliott, and Steamboats also illustrated the class and social distinctions of the antebellum age. How does he characterize Eliza? All told, the movement of slaves in the South made up one of the largest forced internal migrations in the United States. Theirs was a world of mobility and restlessness, a constant search for the next area to grow the valuable crop. By the early 1900s, the botanist Thomas Henry Kearney (18741956) created a long staple cotton which was named Pima after the Indians who grew it. He later escaped and wrote a book about his experiences: Twelve Years a Slave. While the decks carried precious cargo, ornate rooms graced the interior. accessed May 01, 2023, Those who sold their slaves could realize great profits, as could the slave brokers who served as middlemen between sellers and buyers. [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. Cotton Culture, A close view of a stalk 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. 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. ", US Department of Agriculture, Cotton production in the U.S. from 2001 to 2022 (in 1,000 bales)* Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/191500/cotton-production-in-the-us-since-2000/ (last visited May 01, 2023), Cotton production in the U.S. from 2001 to 2022 (in 1,000 bales)* [Graph], US Department of Agriculture, January 12, 2023. The cottonseed from Missouri cotton production is used as livestock feed. January 12, 2023. Cotton was a prime commodity during the . The ship, Glad Tidings, with a cargo of American cotton entering the port of Liverpool in the mid-1800s. 1000. New York: Random House, 1967, Foner, Philip Sheldon. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. The Economics of Cotton | US History I (OS Collection) Kentucky slaveholders sold some seventy-one thousand individuals. Then you can access your favorite statistics via the star in the header. Please create an employee account to be able to mark statistics as favorites. More than 99 percent of the cotton grown in the US is of the Upland variety, with the rest being American Pima. It became a major crop in the 1930s. Between 1860 and 1870, Brazilian annual cotton exports rose 400%, from 12,000 to 60,000 tonnes. [17] Yet the cotton industry continued to be very important for blacks in the southern United States, much more so than for whites. For many slaves, the domestic slave trade incited the terror of being sold away from family and friends. "Cotton production in the U.S. from 2001 to 2022 (in 1,000 bales)*." As telegraph lines spread westward, cotton could be bought and sold on the world market faster than ever before. The Great Depression, 1929-1932, Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1941, Fighting the Good Fight in World War II, 1941-1945, Post-War Prosperity and Cold War Fears, 1945-1960, Political Storms at Home and Abroad, 1968-1980, The Challenges of the Twenty-First Century, Presidents of the United States of America, African Americans in the Antebellum United States, The Filibuster and the Quest for New Slave States, Explain the labor-intensive processes of cotton production, Describe the importance of cotton to the Atlantic and American antebellum economy. "[16] However, discrimination towards blacks continued as it did in the rest of society, and isolated incidents often broke out. Suddenly, a process that was extraordinarily labor-intensive when done by hand could be completed quickly and easily. By 1860, Great Britain, the worlds most powerful country, had become the birthplace of the industrial revolution, and a significant part of that nations industry was cotton textiles. Slavery and King Cotton - US History I: Precolonial to Gilded Age However, following the War of 1812, a huge increase in production resulted in the so-called cotton boom, and by midcentury, cotton became the key cash crop (a crop grown to sell rather than for the farmers sole use) of the southern economy and the most important American commodity. The landowner received one-third. 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. After this date, importing slaves from Africa became illegal in the United States. The introduction of barbed wire in the 1870s and the building of railroads further stimulated the industry. An overseer or master measured each individual slaves daily yield. In 1807, the U.S. Congress abolished the foreign slave trade, a ban that went into effect on January 1, 1808. 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. One bale of cotton is about 500 pounds. Nearly all the exported cotton was shipped to Great Britain, fueling its burgeoning textile industry and making the powerful British Empire increasingly dependent on American cotton and southern slavery. sharecroppers, small farmers, and plantation owners in the American south had produced more cotton than . Maryland slave dealers sold at least 185,000 slaves. [7] The Hopson Planting Company produced the first crop of cotton to be entirely planted, harvested, and baled by machinery in 1944. about how many millions of bales of cotton were produced in the south The enslaved population in the United States was approximately 700,000 at the time of the signing of the Constitution. Large production in the latter areas was obtained by extensive use of fertilizers and irrigation. Major new ports developed at St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; and other locations. After the war, when steel and rubber became available to manufacturers again, farmers began to mechanize their methods of planting, cultivating, and harvesting, thus eliminating the need for tenants and sharecroppers, many of whom did not return to farmwork, and leading to new practices in cotton production that remain in use today. Robert L. Haney, Milestones: Marking Ten Decades of Research (College Station: Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, 1989). A specially designed plow made it possible to break up the thick black sod, and the fertile prairie soil produced as much as one bale per acre in some areas. A wagon or sled with an open groove down the center of the bed proved to be a better device. 2,250,000 Which decade experienced the greatest increase in the number of slaves? By 1860, Georgia alone produced 701,840 bales of cotton, establishing it as the fourth-largest cotton-growing state. Cotton accounted for over half of all American exports during the first half of the 19th century. China imported about 11% of U.S. cotton last year, which was a sharp increase over previous seasons, allowing it to overtake El Salvador, which has consistently imported about 8-9% of the total. Within a few years, boll weevil damage affected crops throughout Texas and the Cotton Belt, the cotton-growing states of the Deep South.