Cotton in American Economic History

Cotton in antebellum America

In the early United States Cotton was not part of the economy. It was believed in fact that commercial
quantities of cotton could not be produced in the United States (Economic History, 115). This was due
especially to the labor required to extract the seeds, thickly entwined in cotton fiber, from the cotton
lint. It is estimated that it took a slave up to 18 months to remove the seeds from one bale of cotton.
This changed dramatically with the invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney. This was a device that
contained rotating saw blades that caught the fiber of the cotton and pulled it through a slot that was
too narrow for the seeds to pass through (Modern Marvels). This simple process revolutionized cotton
production in the United States. Even the hand driven earliest models of the Cotton Gins were able to
remove the seeds from 50lbs of cotton in one day. The Cotton Gin dramatically increased the United
States productivity in producing commercial cotton. The Cotton Gin, even in its earliest models without
a prime-mover more powerful than a human arm, made cotton extraction more efficient by a factor of
50. Later the invention of the steam engine increased that to 1000-2000 times the pre cotton-gin
productivity rate (Modern Marvels). According to the History Channels narrative on the history of
cotton, In 1793, the year of Whitney's invention, the South produced 10,000 bales of cotton. By 1835, it
was producing one million bales a year. Cotton was, however, still a labor-using resource-wasting
industry. There were no working mechanical cotton pickers in the antebellum period. Until then, there
was only slave gang labor, and it became extraordinarily efficient by reduction of the work to specialized
tasks and the control of rhythm. . . The goal of the slave field gang system was regular intensive labor.
Cotton production made Sothern plantations labor intensive. (Economic History, 178) Cotton had to
be hand-picked from the cotton buds when they opened and carried by hand back to the area where it
would be processed in the cotton gin. This labor using aspect of cotton growing gave a tremendous
motive to Sothern farmers to own and purchase slaves. Between 1790 and 1860 the number of slaves

increased from 690 slaves to 4,097 slaves. The southern slave population peaked as a percentage to
the free white population in 1830, when the number of slaves were 61% of the total of free whites
(Economic History, 179).
Francis Lowell and his girls.
In 1812 Francis Cabot Lowell came from England where he had observed the Cotton Textile mills of
England. Many of these mills were terrible places, where children were forced to work long hours on
the cotton mills. Lowell knew he could create a more humane system in the United States. Lowell
began his work of building a large cotton textile factory, which was ultimately completed by some of his
associates after he died in his early 40s (Modern Marvels). Lowell and his associates succeeded in
creating a more humane factory system by employing farm girls, and promising them higher wages than
they could earn on the farm. Textile mills then began to multiply in New England and other (primarily
Northern) states. This system of United States textile mills effectively integrated slave-produced cotton
into both northern and Sothern states (Economic History, 119 and 224). An odd contradiction about
early America it that it was in the slave-produced-cotton weaving factories of Lowell and others that
opened the way for women to begin to assert their rights to vote and participate in the political process.
Thus, the suffrage movement, and its success, was perhaps accelerated by the slave-produced cotton
grown in the South and processed in Northern textile manufacturing. In early America, cotton textile
manufacturing would begin to set the stage for increased rights for women as their labor input was
eventually recognized as property in United States law (Economic History 425-431). This opened a new
manufacturing culture in the United States that was different from those in England and other areas
abroad.
Cotton in the North

Even with the help of hundreds of farm girls, labor was still sufficiently scarce, and the cost of
production of textiles and other products in American manufacturing was sufficiently high to justify
investment in new technologies and increased automation. It was the Pawtucket Falls in Lowell
Massachusetts that were selected as a site for Lowells first factory. It was the fast moving, high volume
rivers in New England that drove much of the early cotton-textile manufacturing investment to happen
there. The rivers were the perfect source of energy for the prime-movers that made automated
manufacturing possible. New England also had a relatively dense population compared to the rest of
the country. Thus, the New England water along with its population concentration created the perfect
environment for manufacturing. This was true even after the early steam engines began to be used as
prime movers. In their text American Economic History Hughes and Cain explain why, The longer
depreciation period for water power made the annual capital cost, where there were good water sites,
somewhat lower than it was for the steam engine. Especially if the raw material, like cotton, could be
easily transported to the factory site (the site of the prime mover), steam engines lost one of their
advantages over waterpowerflexibility of location. Thus, cotton textiles were destined for a long life
in New Englands water-driven mills. (Economic History, 217)
Cotton and the Civil War
Henry Louis Gatess essay When Cotton Was King quoted Gene Dattel as stating, the most important
determinant of American history in the 19th century. . . Cotton prolonged Americas most serious social
tragedy, slavery, and slave-produced cotton caused the American Civil War. What made cotton such a

strong determinate of the civil war? From the beginning of slavery in the United States there was an
opposition movement that viewed slavery as immoral. This movement continued to grow in the north
and south, as new farming practices led to a surplus of slave labor. However, as we have seen, the
cotton gin changed everything. Once the south was able to produce commercial quantities of cotton a
climate for new religious and political propaganda was created. Below, is a cartoon depicting slavery as
morally correct, humane,
and an improvement over
the working class system
of England (Economic
History, 117Cartoon).
In this new political and
religious climate slave
owners were able to be
http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/

socially accepted, and

even viewed as pious and devout in their Christian faith. Yet, as is evidenced in the slave owning
families of some of the American Founding Fathers, many were not convinced. Despite its economic
advantages to the United States, many of the founding generation hated slavery and the cotton culture
of the south. Yet despite their feelings of injustice about slavery their fears of abolition prevailed.
Jefferson is quoted as stating his conviction of the injustice of slavery with these words, I tremble for
my country, when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. Yet he also expressed
his fear of abolition in this way, Deep rooted prejudice entertained by the whites; ten thousand
recollections by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions
which nature has made; and many other circumstances will divide us into parties, and produce
convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other races. . .

Fortunately, the slave owning cotton culture of the south did not end in the destruction of either race.
However, conflict was inevitable and began with a war between Northern and Sothern interests and
ideologies. This ideological conflict led to a political battle that would last from the founding of the
United States in 1776 until the Civil War began in 1861.
The Civil War, while morally unquestioned by most, is doubles one of the great economic tragedies of
American history. In the Civil war 600,000 lives were lost, 1.5 billion dollars worth of property was
destroyed, and the economic face of one-third of the country was to remain scarred for nearly 100 years
(Economic History, 263 & 277). In their book American Economic History, Hughes and Cain emphasize
the human capitol lost and assign monetary values to human lives. While this seems cold, it opens a
view to the economic damage of the civil war (Economic History, 263-279).
Cotton and Sothern backwardness
The south was well into the 20th century before it began to recover economically from the civil war
(Economic History, 278). Why was the damage so great and debilitating? The South had been built up
around the economy of Cotton, and the Cotton economy was dependent upon slave labor. With slave
labor the plantation owners could extract more working hours per day than they could from employees.
Long working days, gang labor systems, and painful lashings from a whip were motivation for increased
productivity per hour and increased hours worked per day (Economic History, 178). After the civil war
this economic tool was no longer available to plantation owners. Those who wanted to grow cotton
had to hire their labor. Because labor was no longer forced, laborers could begin to demand shorter
working days, higher pay, and improved working environments. This along with the physical destruction
of property in the south impoverished their entire economy. Cotton went from being the lucrative crop
of the south, to being a poverty crop (Economic History, 272-73). While the north had gone through a
revolution of increased automation and efficiency in harvesting wheat and other crops, cotton was still a

labor using crop in its harvest phase (Economic History, 273, and 314-15). It was not until the invention
of the one-row spinal picker in the 1930s that cotton farmers were able to replace human labor with
harvest machinery (Modern Marvels). This combination of decreasing hours put into labor, increasing
cost of labor, and a lack of automated cotton harvesting tools explain why the south remained crippled
for so long after the civil war (Economic History, 273).
Conclusion
From the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 to the Civil War in 1861 cotton has been woven deeply into
the economic history of the United States. Cotton was the main motive for plantation owners
investment in slaves. Slave-produced cotton drove the economy of the south, gave the United States a
valuable substance to use in international trade, and fed the textile mills in New England and many
other parts of the county. The slave labor that harvested the cotton drove the nation to a civil war.
And the Civil War led to the long-term economic crippling of one-third of the nation.

Sources
American Economic History; Book; Eighth Edition; Jonathan Hughes and Louis Cain.
Pro-Slavery Cartoon; Image; http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu; Also in, American Economic History, pg.
117
Why Was Cotton King; Essay; Henry Lois Gates Jr.
Modern Marvels: Cotton; DVD; The History Channel.