Southern black cotton farmers faced discrimination and strikes often broke out by black cotton farmers. One bale of cotton is about 500 pounds. Following the War of 1812, cotton became the key cash crop of the southern economy and the most important American commodity. The White population grew from 5,179 in 1800 to 353,901 in 1860; the enslaved population correspondingly expanded from 3,489 to 436,631. Major new ports developed at St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; and other locations. Legumes, both summer and winter, play an important part in building up soil fertility and in making cotton production more profitable. Georgia had led the world in cotton production during the first boom in the 1820s, with 150,000 bales in 1826; later slumps led to some agricultural diversification. Cotton and tobacco prices collapsed in 1920 following overproduction and the boll weevil pest wiped out the sea island cotton crop in 1921. Sometimes the cotton was dried before it was ginned (put through the process of separating the seeds from the cotton fiber). Create a standalone learning module, lesson, assignment, assessment or activity, Submit OER from the web for review by our librarians, Please log in to save materials. [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. This astonishing increase in supply did not cause a long-term decrease in the price of cotton. This economic growth exacted a severe and tragic human price through slavery and the prejudicial treatment of free Black people. Steamboats moved down the river transporting cotton grown on plantations along the river and throughout the South to the port at New Orleans. This sharp rise in production in the late 1850s and early 1860s was due at least in part to the removal of Indians, which opened up new areas for cotton production. Statista. Another type of harvester is the spindle picker. West Texas farmers usually plant a smaller quantity of seed per acre than East Texas growers. Some slaveholders responded to this situation by freeing slaves; far more decided to sell their excess bondsmen. Whitney gave up his career as a teacher to devote full time to manufacturing cotton gins and making money. Some of the inexpensive clothing, called slops, and shoes worn by slaves were manufactured in the North. Weeding the cotton rows took significant energy and time. About 75 percent of the cotton produced in the United States was eventually exported abroad. American cotton made up two-thirds of . This spacing helps to make the plants fruit earlier than would a wider spacing and usually results in higher yields. [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. 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. An abolitionist print shows a group of slaves in chains being sold by a trader on horseback to another dealer. If the land has any appreciable slope, it should be terraced or contoured to prevent soil erosion and conserve water. 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. Cotton production in the U.S. from 2001 to 2022 (in 1,000 bales)* [Graph]. In, US Department of Agriculture. 720,000, 2.85 million, 5 million By the civil war how much did cotton account for American exports? By 1860, the region was producing two-thirds of the worlds cotton. 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. Mechanical strippers, which followed, pulled the boll off the plant by means of revolving rollers or brushes. Farmers used calcium arsenate dust and other pesticides to reduce the damage from boll weevils and such pests as the pink bollworm. The 1889 census reported 3,934,525 acres producing 1.5 million bales. Cotton was first grown in Texas by Spanish missionaries. Over the next several months, from April to August, they carefully tended the plants. Cotton dictated the Souths huge role in a global economy that included Europe, New York, other New England states, and the American west. Some southerners believed that their regions monopoly over the lucrative cotton cropon which both the larger American and Atlantic markets dependedand their possession of a slave labor force allowed the South to remain independent from the market revolution. The boll weevil arrived four years later. [25] The average price was $0.58 per pound. [citation needed]. 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. Fred C. Elliott, and How does he characterize Freeman, the slave trader? Mississippi attracted investors as well as residents. Solomon Northup was a free black man living in Saratoga, New York, when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841. 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. Exporting at such high volumes made the United States the undisputed world leader in cotton production. A quick glance at the numbers shows what happened. equivalent bales). In 1850, twenty-five percent of the population of New Orleans, Louisiana, was from the North and ten percent of the population in Mobile, Alabama, was former New Yorkers. New Orleans, the hub of commerce, boasted the largest slave market in the United States and grew to become the nations fourth-largest city as a result. upon the Southern mind before 1860 that it became within itself a cause to be defended. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1972, Hughes, Jonathan. [34], Cotton was grown in Mexican California. The cotton crop in 1900 was more than 3.5 million bales from 7,178,915 acres. Signup today for our free newsletter, Especially Texan. How many bales of cotton did Georgia produce before the cotton gin? This astonishing increase in supply did not cause a long-term decrease in the price of cotton. Photograph courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History, PI/1997.0006.0470. You need at least a Starter Account to use this feature. Directly accessible data for 170 industries from 50 countries and over 1 million facts: Get quick analyses with our professional research service. [36], In the late 19th and early 20th century, federal agricultural engineers worked in the Arizona Territory on an experimental farm in Sacaton. Visit the Internet Archive to watch a 1937 WPA film showing cotton bales being loaded onto a steamboat. The English Empire, 16601763, Imperial Reforms and Colonial Protests, 1763-1774, America's War for Independence, 1775-1783, Creating Republican Governments, 17761790, Growing Pains: The New Republic, 17901820, Industrial Transformation in the North, 18001850, A Nation on the Move: Westward Expansion, 18001860, Antebellum Idealism and Reform Impulses, 18201860, Go West Young Man! In August, after the cotton plants had flowered and the flowers had begun to give way to cotton bolls (the seed-bearing capsule that contains the cotton fiber), all the plantations slavesmen, women, and childrenworked together to pick the crop (Figure). Mississippi did not exist in a vacuum. The Nobel Prize-winning economist, Douglass C. North, stated that cotton was the most important proximate cause of expansion in the 19th century American economy. b. Sadly for Whitney, the cotton gin generated no profits because other manufacturers copied his design without paying him fees. The enslaved population in the United States was approximately 700,000 at the time of the signing of the Constitution. In 1807, the U.S. Congress abolished the foreign slave trade, a ban that went into effect on January 1, 1808. 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). While in 1987, Arizona was producing 66% of the countrys Pima cotton, it has dropped to only 2% in recent years. In both cases tenants and sharecroppers, whether White or Black, bought such goods as shoes, medicines, and staple food items from the landowners' commissaries, and the landowners kept the accounts. This statistic is not included in your account. For many slaves, the domestic slave trade incited the terror of being sold away from family and friends. Machines at the gin clean the trash from the fibers. Indeed, the number of southern cotton bales exported to Europe dropped from 3 million bales in 1860 to mere thousands. In 1990, 74 percent of the Texas cotton crop was gathered by strippers and 26 percent by spindle pickers. [3] The final estimate of U.S. cotton production in 2012 was 17.31 million sales,[4] with the corresponding figures for China and India being 35 million and 26.5 million bales, respectively. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-89701. "[16] However, discrimination towards blacks continued as it did in the rest of society, and isolated incidents often broke out. The United States exports more cotton than any other country, though it ranks third in total production, behind China and India. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1966, Young, Mary Elizabeth. 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. American cotton production soared from 156,000 bales in 1800 to more than 4,000,000 bales in 1860 (a bale is a compressed bundle of cotton weighing between 400 and 500 pounds). 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. d. 1850-1860 In what decade was there the lowest increase in cotton production? By 1860, Georgia alone produced 701,840 bales of cotton, establishing it as the fourth-largest cotton-growing state. Much of the corn and pork that slaves consumed came from farms in the West. By the end of this section, you will be able to: A project created by ISKME. How many bales of cotton did the south produce In 1830,1850,1860? Accessed May 01, 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191500/cotton-production-in-the-us-since-2000/, US Department of Agriculture. 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. Not surprisingly, given these figures, the southern economy remained overwhelmingly agricultural. By 1911, however, production reached its peak at 1.6 million bales. Legal Notices. Cotton, however, emerged as the antebellum Souths major commercial crop, eclipsing tobacco, rice, and sugar in economic importance. Mapping History : The Spread of Cotton and of Slavery 1790-1860 - Introduction Introduction This module has four parts. The population and cotton production statistics tell a simple, but significant story. ", Wyse, R. C. The Selling and Financing of the American Cotton Crop., Moses S. Musoke, and Alan L. Olmstead. Boston: Little Brown, 1986, Bruchey, Stuart. [7] The Hopson Planting Company produced the first crop of cotton to be entirely planted, harvested, and baled by machinery in 1944. How does he characterize Eliza? Visit the Internet Archive to watch a 1937 WPA film showing cotton bales being loaded onto a steamboat. [28] Four out of the top five importers of U.S.-produced cotton are in North America; the principal destination is Honduras, with about 33% of the total, although this has been in decline slightly over recent years. As soon as this statistic is updated, you will immediately be notified via e-mail. By 1850, six mills were in operation in and around Petersburg and they employed approximately 700 female workers. Petit Gulf cotton grew extremely well in different soils and climates. New Yorkers even dominated a booming slave trade in the 1850s. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. The second displays the spread of slavery during those same decades. How many bales of cotton were produced in 1850? "The rise of the cotton industry in California: A comparative perspective. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, upland cotton in Missouri was valued at 0.751 $ / pound in 2017. Eli Whitney (1765-1825) Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-8283. From 2012-2016, Missouri was ranked eighth in cotton production in the United States with the average production value of $191,004,400. While tobacco was a labor-intensive crop that required many people to cultivate it, wheat was not. When the box is full, a tractor pulls it forward, leaving on the turnrow a "loaf" of cotton that is eight feet high by eight feet wide by thirty-two feet long. The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860. The introduction of barbed wire in the 1870s and the building of railroads further stimulated the industry. 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. "Emancipation and empire: Reconstructing the worldwide web of cotton production in the age of the American Civil War. On the eve of the Civil War, cotton provided the economic underpinnings of the Southern economy. Within a few years, boll weevil damage affected crops throughout Texas and the Cotton Belt, the cotton-growing states of the Deep South. Cotton farming was one of the major areas of racial tension in its history, where many whites expressed concerns about the mass employment of blacks in the industry and the dramatic growth of black landowners. By the 1970s, most cotton was grown in large automated farms in the Southwest. Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). The U.S. cotton crop nearly doubled, from 2.1 million bales in 1850 to 3.8 million bales ten years later. Indeed, American cotton soon made up two-thirds of the global supply, and production continued to soar. 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. In short, cotton helped tie the country together. During the picking season, slaves worked from sunrise to sunset with a ten-minute break at lunch; many slaveholders tended to give them little to eat, since spending on food would cut into their profits. . 4,000,000 or four million bales of cotton were produced in the 1860's. At least that is what I read. If you are an admin, please authenticate by logging in again. Annual production slumped from 1,365,000 bales in the 1910s to 801,000 in the 1920s. Print from The Illustrated London News courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-64405. 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. Leading States for cotton production [30] In Japan, especially Texas cotton is very highly regarded as its strong fibers lend themselves perfectly to low tension weaving. After a few months, he wrote the now-famous letter to his father in which he described his discovery: I involuntarily happened to be thinking on the subject [of cleaning cotton] and struck out a plan of a Machine [to remove the cotton seed]I concluded to relinquish my school and turn my attention to perfecting the Machine. That machine was the cotton gin. New Orleans had been part of the French empire before the United States purchased it, along with the rest of the Louisiana Territory, in 1803. Between 1860 and 1870, Brazilian annual cotton exports rose 400%, from 12,000 to 60,000 tonnes. The first displays the dramatic growth of cotton production in the United States from 1790 to 1860. Natchez, Mississippi, had the second-largest market. at the war's end how many bales of raw cotton were available. As the cotton industry boomed in the South, the Mississippi River quickly became the essential water highway in the United States. Learn more about how Statista can support your business. The best of the best: the portal for top lists & rankings: Strategy and business building for the data-driven economy: Industry-specific and extensively researched technical data (partially from exclusive partnerships). Entire old-growth forests and cypress swamps fell to the axe as slaves labored to strip the vegetation to make way for cotton. This particular chapter of the story of slavery in the United States starts at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1860 over 4 million of these were produced. The 1850s were a boom time for cotton factories. statistic alerts) please log in with your personal account. In general, planters expected a good hand, or slave, to work ten acres of land and pick two hundred pounds of cotton a day. To begin King Cotton diplomacy, some 2.5 million bales of cotton were burned in the South to create a cotton shortage. [44][45][46][47], Cotton growing is largely confined to a county near the westernmost tip of the state[citation needed]. The cottonseed from Missouri cotton production is used as livestock feed. Why was this thinking misguided? The crop grown in the South was a hybrid: Gossypium barbadense, known as Petit Gulf cotton, a mix of Mexican, Georgia, and Siamese strains. Americans were well aware of the fact that the economic value placed on an enslaved person generally correlated to the price of cotton. 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. [citation needed] Texas produces approximately 25% of the country's cotton crop on more than 6 million acres, the equivalent of over 9,000 square miles (23,000km2) of cotton fields. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, upland cotton in Missouri was valued at 0.751 $ / pound in 2017. (January 12, 2023). 4,000,000 or four million bales of cotton were produced in the 1860's. At least that is what I read. Spindle pickers are used in areas of high rainfall where plants grow tall before they are defoliated. E. A. Miller. William Faulkner, Mississippis most famous novelist, once said, To understand the world, you have to understand a place like Mississippi., To the world, Mississippi was the epicenter of the cotton production phenomenon during the first half of the 19th century. 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. -Uba6rtc34. Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License. White America, not just White southerners, helped determine that the destiny of Black America would be in the cotton fields of the South for many decades to come. At the same time, Eli Whitney, a twenty-eight-year-old unemployed recent graduate of Yale University, journeyed to the South to become a tutor on a plantation. Major U.S. states for cotton production 2022, Cotton yield per harvested acre in the U.S. 2001-2022, Cotton price received by U.S. farmers 2007-2021, To download this statistic in XLS format you need a Statista Account, To download this statistic in PNG format you need a Statista Account, To download this statistic in PDF format you need a Statista Account. It is best not to plant until the soil has warmed up enough to ensure quick and uniform germination. Left: Acres of upland cotton harvested as a percent of harvested cropland acreage (2007). It was here that Pima Indians cultivated various cotton hybrids seeking ideal traits. [23] As a result of the devastating harvest of 1922, some 50,000 black cotton workers left South Carolina, and by the 1930s the state population had declined some 15%, largely due to cotton stagnation. [29] Cotton exports to China grew from a value of $46 million in 2000 to more than $2 billion in 2010. Use Ask Statista Research Service. [11], After the Civil War, cotton production expanded to small farms, operated by white and black tenant farmers and sharecroppers. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/cotton-culture. ", 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. We are a community-supported, non-profit organization and we humbly ask for your support because the careful and accurate recording of our history has never been more important. [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). This is a drop of over 5 million bales from the previous year. 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. One-half to one bushel of fuzzy seed or from ten to fifteen pounds of delinted seed per acre is usually planted, the amount depending upon the section of the state. ", Sven Beckert, "Emancipation and empire: Reconstructing the worldwide web of cotton production in the age of the American Civil War. Strippers are used to harvest cotton in the Plains region, where plants are small and grow close to the ground. It should be grown only on naturally fertile soils or on soils enriched by inoculated and properly fertilized legumes, barnyard manure, or commercial fertilizer. 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. 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. 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. [32] With eight production regions around Texas, and only four geographic regions, it is the state's leading cash crop. Fred C. Elliott, By 1860, New York had become the capital of the South because of its dominant role in the cotton trade. 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. He soon became obsessed with the bottleneck in cotton production on his employers Georgia plantation. So, in a sense, Faulkners words could be reversed: To understand Mississippi, you have to understand the world.. In Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and elsewhere in the South, slave auctions happened every day. [3], Cotton has been planted and cultured in the United States since before the American Revolution, especially in South Carolina. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1970, Bowen, Catherine Drinker. 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. Contemporary uses include fertilizer, paper, tires, cake and meal for cattle feed, and cottonseed oil for cooking, paint, and lubricants. After the seeds had been removed, the cotton was pressed into bales. "Cotton production in the U.S. from 2001 to 2022 (in 1,000 bales)*." Between 1790 and 1859, slaveholders in Virginia sold more than half a million slaves. 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. A high demand for cotton during World War I stimulated production, but a drop in prices after the war led many tenants and sharecroppers to abandon farming altogether and move to the cities for better job opportunities. In 1849 a census of the cotton production of the state reported 58,073 bales (500 pounds each). The slave states of South Carolina and Georgia were adamant about having slavery protected by the Constitution. [42] Missouri upland cotton production in 2017 was valued at $261,348,000 with 750,000,480 pound bales produced in that year. During the baling process a sample is automatically removed. 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. "The rise of the cotton industry in California: A comparative perspective. By the late 1920s around two-thirds of all African-American tenants and almost three-fourths of the croppers worked on cotton farms. The method also broke off bolls, leaves, and sticks and mixed them in the fiber. The first mechanical harvester consisted of fence posts attached to a draft animal and dragged between rows to dislodge the cotton. As a Premium user you get access to background information and details about the release of this statistic. The next most important importer is Mexico, with about 18%, a figure which has been broadly stable, and then the Dominican Republic, although exports have declined as a proportion of the total in recent years. An overseer or master measured each individual slaves daily yield. The power of cotton on the world market may have brought wealth to the South, but it also increased its economic dependence on other countries and other parts of the United States. American cotton production soared from 156,000 bales in 1800 to more than 4,000,000 bales in 1860 (a bale is a compressed bundle of cotton weighing between 400 and 500 pounds). In these spaces, whites socialized in the ships saloons and dining halls while black slaves served them (Figure). New York investors financed New York-based slave ships that sailed to West Africa to pick up African captives that were then sold in Cuba and Brazil. The United States is the world's top exporter of cotton. krispyKyle krispyKyle 05/01/2017 History College answered About how many millions of bales of cotton were produced in the south in 1860 See answers Advertisement Advertisement swalla swalla 4,000,000 or four million . Please create an employee account to be able to mark statistics as favorites. However, the very cotton that provided the South with such economic potency also increased its reliance on the larger U.S. and world markets, which suppliedamong other thingsthe food and clothes slaves needed, the furniture and other manufactured goods that defined the southern standard of comfortable living, and the banks from which southerners borrowed needed funds. Bad weather causes considerable shedding of the seed cotton from the bolls and lowers the grade and value of the fiber. Georgia produced a record 2.8 million bales on 4.9 million acres in 1911. By the time of the Civil War, South Carolina . After emancipation, African Americans were still identified with cotton production. Increasingly often, however, high-volume instrument classing occurs at offices near the gins. Missouri soil allows for the growth of upland cotton with the average bale weighing approximately five hundred pounds. Seventy percent of that crop was ginned from modules, and 30 percent from trailers. Business & Slavery: The New York Merchants & the Irrepressible Conflict. 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. You only have access to basic statistics. [43], Missouri grows upland cotton, and cottonseed, which is a valuable livestock feed. Answer 2. https://www.tshaonline.org, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/cotton-culture, By:
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