Big Cotton: How A Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map

Big Cotton: How A Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map by Stephen Yafa

Cotton was a key player in the industrial revolution and the early history of the United States. The English liked cotton fabric more than the native wool. It came from India and took the country by storm. However, the Indians had the climate to grow it and the skill to transform it to cloth and clothing. Some enterprising Brits worked to learn some of the secrets. Then they worked to make them better. They were able to develop machinery to automate some of the processes. This machines made things much more efficient, but still required many workers. At first, the giant mills were set up by a water source. Later, coal-power allowed them to be anywhere. They helped usher in the industrial revolution. This also led to huge amounts of pollution as well as horrible labor conditions, with child and adult labor.

At first these mills would require cotton from India. However, the American south had a good climate for growing cotton. This had been going along, but was not able to compete well. Plantation slavery could have been on its way out. Then the cotton gin was invented, and things kicked off. Great plantations with many slaves could earn great money - as long as the conditions were right. At first all of this cotton was shipped off to England (via the north.) Then the New England mills were built up. These were built as more "enlightened towns" that treated their employees much better than the English factories. 

The northern factories would initially turn a blind eye towards the slavery in the south. However, as more atrocities became known, that became untenable, and even the mill owners turned into abolitionists. This led to the Civil War. The Cotton interests on both sides expected this to be a quick skirmish before returning to business as usual. The south also had hope that they could bypass the north and sell cotton directly to English. Alas, all sides were wrong. England was reluctant to publicly side with pro-slavery interests and the war went on for multiple years. It took cotton some time to recover.

After the war, cotton returned, but looked different. Textile mills migrated from the northeast to the south. Slave plantations were replaced by sharecroppers and hired labor. Then the boll weevil hit. This best decimated cotton fields. The attempts to eliminate decimated the environment. Cotton still consumes huge amounts of pesticides - even with cotton genetically engineered to be pest and herbicide resistant.

The book starts with a chronological narrative of cotton's history then breaks to explore some key areas of content. There is a discussion on the history of blue jeans and how they played a key role in clothing and culture. There is also discussion of pests, pesticides and organic. It felt we were going back in time to explore cotton from a different angle. The author does fill the book with sly insights and bits of humor. He also makes it personal, tying it to his experience in the early mill town, Lowell, Massachusetts and his buddy Paul Tsongas.