Econ 1740

Ryan Parker
May 3, 2017

Cotton and the American Economy

During this reflection paper, I will revisit all the information I have learned throughout

this class and talk about a lot of the information that I have received from the video as well as the

article. The two biggest themes that we will visit in this paper are cotton and slavery.

We are first going to address what makes cotton what it is. The most common use for

cotton, 95% to be exact, is used mostly in clothing and household textiles. The other 5% is made

into a broad range of products. These include plastics, explosives, camera film, and cooking oil.

What makes cotton such a desired product is that it is a hollow fiber. The benefit of this is that it

makes textiles cooler in the warm seasons and warmer in the cold seasons.

When it comes to cotton, a new crop needs to be grown every few years. Cotton depletes

nutrients from the soil very rapidly. The main nutrient that it depletes is boron. I feel that this

contributes to the expansion of south cotton planters towards the west because their crops would

start to be less productive so they would need to expand their fields and grow more cotton. I

found this interesting: the cotton plant can actually grow into a tree, it does make it harder to

pick the cotton from though. The two biggest cotton producers today are Texas and California.

We are now going to talk about the history of cotton. Cotton was first discovered and

used in northwest India 5500 years ago. A lot of people had trouble figuring out where cotton

first came from, particularly because of an imaginative traveler who described cotton as the

vegetable lambs of Sythia. From his descriptions, many people were unsure of cottons origin.
This happened mostly in Europe. Alexander the Great was one of the first to really start pushing

cotton as a trading good throughout the known world during his time.

We will now talk about some of the dark history associated with cotton. In the 1700s it

became a crime to purchase and wear cotton. Europe did not have the means to produce the

cotton needed for clothing, so the majority of the textiles were coming out of India. This was

taking away the money from Europe. This was a crime punishable by death is some cases.

Europe decided that instead of making cotton illegal, they were going to invade India and

colonize the cotton for themselves. Cotton wasnt a main reason for the invasion, but it did play a

key role.

After conquering India, Europe made it illegal for Indian textiles to be spun by their own

manufacturers. This forced the country to have to buy the European textiles. One of the other big

issues caused by cotton was the lack of regulations within certain places within Europe. One of

the worst was Manchester, England. This would eventually become known as one of the biggest

foul cities in Europe. With the pollution and the disregard for regulations created the city to very

unkept and low some.

The darkest part of the Manchester England textile factory was that while it was running,

it had two hundred thousand orphans forced to work there against their will. One other obvious

dark side of the cotton industry was the Americas intense slave trade, especially after the

creation of the cotton gin. This sped up the production of cotton by astronomical amounts.

Eventually, with the increase in slavery, and other issues within the south would bring about the

Civil War between the North and the South.

 Lets take a moment and talk about the cotton gin itself. Before I watched the video, I

was unsure of how the cotton gin worked. The cotton gin was set up with several blades that

were kept within a track. As the cotton was inserted into the cotton gin, the blades would turn

and catch the bit of cotton and try to pull it through a slot. While doing this, it also removed the

seed with minimal effort. Before the cotton gin, it would take eighteen months for a slave to hand

pick out all the seeds. The cotton gin sped up production two thousand times faster. As I

mentioned before, this called for an increase in slave labor, to keep up with the demand of

cotton. By the year 1860 over sixty percent of the U.S. export was made up of cotton.

The greatest enemy to cotton was the boll weevil. This crossed from Mexico to the

United States in the 1890s. Within this time, it would destroy fourteen billion dollars worth of

cotton. The weevils would be a continual problem for cotton farmers all the way up to the 1970s.

Lets talk about the Civil war next. As all of us are aware of one of the biggest issues that

lead to the Civil war, which was slavery. Many scholars and historians still argue if the Civil war

was necessary for slavery to be abolished. Many people feel that slavery was a dying industry

with the creation of so many inventions and farm equipment. Others feel that slavery would have

been a continual cancer within the United States systems, had it not been addressed with the

Civil war. There is convincing evidence for both sides of the debate. I personally feel that the

Civil war was necessary.

As human beings, we try to get the most outcome from the least amount of effort. In my

opinion, the innovation and creation of innovative technologies would have decreased the

number of slaves, but increased the amount of slave labor required. Though I feel that the Civil

war was necessary to abolish slavery faster, the price paid was extremely high. Approximately

six hundred thousand people died on both sides of the war. This was nine percent of the male
population between the ages of fifteen and thirty-nine. The war itself caused both the north and

the south over 6.7 billion dollars by the end of the war.

One of the biggest downfalls for the south was that they were counting on Europes

financial support with the war. Considering that much of their exports went to Europe. The exact

opposite happened. Most of Europe did not agree with slavery and in turn stopped purchasing as

much cotton from the south as they had before the war. This depleted the souths resources to

continue with the Civil war. This was a big contributor to the souths downfall.

Our next topic is one of the other innovators for the American economy. By the late 19th

century, the railroads were the undisputable dominating innovation. By 1860 the American

railroad network stretched into the Midwest as well as the south. There was about thirty thousand

miles of tracks being used at this time. By 1910 there were 351,767 miles of track. At the time,

surface roads only consisted of 204,000 miles. As we can see, railroad travel and transportation

of goods was a large part of our economy at this time. Joseph Schumpeter once commented the

following: U.S. history in the second half of the 19th century could be written solely in terms of

the railroad.

The railroads were one of the big determining factors of helping the Midwest become

urbanized. The railroads made it possible for people to want to settle further away from the East

coast colonies. With the connection of the railroads, it made it easier to have large farms and

plantations with cheaper prices for land. This made it possible to still be able to ship your goods

to the main populated areas.

The only other competitor for railroads was the use of canals and rivers. This may have

been less expensive to ship your goods, but you were at the mercy of the river itself. Whereas the
railroad could go through, over, and around everything. Not to say that there werent downfalls

to the railroads. Human lives seemed to be a common cost of the railroads. Many people who

worked on the railroads were either slaves or those of the very lowest class. On many occasions,

these people died while performing labor on the railroads. They were thrown to the side and

quickly replaced.

One of the big falls to the railroad system was Henry Ford. He created the assembly line

process. This made is possible and affordable for most Americans to own their own personal

vehicle for business and travel.

Another big subject that was discussed in the text was all of the conflicts with the

banking industry. Privately owned banks, government banks, and state banks were all competing

against each other. This also includes all of the rise and fall of different banking industries. I find

it interesting that even to this day there still seems to be a lot of issues with banks. We are still

trying to figure out how to best utilize how to save our money while utilizing the United States

economy.

As I went through this particular class here at Salt Lake Community College, I feel that it

is an important class. We as a nation need to learn where we came from and how we have gotten

to where we are. I feel that this class has given me a perfect start to doing this. The hardest part

that I have found with this particular class is that I have a hard time keeping track of names and

numbers.

This subject is very full of specific names of people within the court systems,

philosophers, historians, and tons of different dates that are important to our American history.

Through my studies in this class I have seen three major topics addressed multiple times. First
and foremost: slavery is involved in at least each section of the book. Second is the impact of the

railroad on the American economy. Third is the big business and the impact of the middle and

lower classes. I find this third topic rather frustrating. I look at our day and age and still see a lot

of the same issues of greed, and disregard for human life when it comes to profits.

In conclusion, I learned a lot from this class and I hope to retain a lot of the information

and knowledge that I gained from it. As an old saying goes, if we dont learn about our history,

we are bound to repeat it.