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America’s first big business

Slavery. It’s how America’s first big business, which led to its economic prominence and launched it to being the second biggest industrial power in the world, was able to be successful. Thus, slavery in fashion is not new in this country, but a tragic and integral part of the American story.

Upon American independence there were roughly 800,000 slaves living in the United States. Shortly thereafter America’s oldest crops, like tobacco, were becoming less desirable due to depleting farmland and loss in value. Contrastingly, the textile industry was exploding in Great Britain and international demand for cotton clothing increased. Cotton was considered as more valuable than wool or even silk, and it even was one of the trade goods used to obtain additional slaves in Africa.

The Cotton Gin

In 1794 Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin, which sped up the production of cotton by removing seeds. Cotton was an ideal crop perfectly suited to the soil in the American South. Unlike other agricultural products it grew easily and could be stored for some time, however the seeds were difficult to separate from the long fibers. The easy to clean long staple cotton grew in coastal areas, but most cotton farmers had to grow the more labor-intensive short-staple cotton. This hand-cranked cotton gin could remove around fifty times what one person could remove from short staple cotton by hand a day. The resulting dramatic rise in production also meant a greater supply of raw materials for the north’s textile mills, which primarily located in New England. 

Production Booms

Now that cotton was less labor-intensive planters could earn more profits, prompting them to grow larger crops and bring in even more slaves as the cheapest form of labor. In 1790 the United States produced 1.5 million pounds of cotton, however ten years later that figure rose to 35 million pounds. Many stakeholders around the globe benefited from slave-cultivated cotton, including Southern plantation owners, Northern banks, shipping merchants, and the British textile industry. A Second Middle Passage arose, transporting more than a million slaves from the Upper South to the Deep South. This was two and a half times the number of slaves brought via the trans-atlantic slave trade, which ended in 1808. Sadly the reproductive labor of enslaved mothers, which often resulted in their children eventually being taken from them and sold, produced the slave labor America relied on.

Fashion and Slavery

The years between 1830 and 1860 were brutal years of family separation for American slaves. A sophisticated system developed with meticulous recordkeeping of people and ever increasing quotas for cotton picking at the threat of violence and family separation. By 1830 the United States was producing 331 million pounds of cotton a day, but by the mid 19th Century cotton had become America’s chief export, constituting 61 percent of the value of all U.S. goods shipped abroad. By 1860, the majority of American slaves worked in the cotton industry where 2.5 million slaves produced five million bales of cotton each year. Slaves also worked in other clothing creation roles including seamstresses. And it wasn’t just the wealthy plantation owners who benefitted from slavery in the 1800s, but also average Americans who enjoyed cheap goods and rising prosperity directly from those enslaved. 

Trail of Tears

The mid-19th Century Trail of Tears was even prompted by the desire to clear more land for cotton. And the result was one of the greatest periods of economic prosperity in American history, where the United States was providing two thirds of the world’s supply of cotton. If the Confederacy had been its own nation it would have been the fourth richest nation in the world at the start of the Civil War. By 1960, on the eve of the Civil War, America was producing 2,275 million pounds of cotton. 

Cotton Production Moves Abroad

Even during the Civil War the proposed strike against cotton by northern abolitionists didn’t stick due to the high comfort and low cost of this material compared to other imports like wool or linen. The Civil War resulted in a “cotton famine” which shocked the economies of Europe and resulted in social unrest in textile cities. Cotton markets developed in India, Brazil, Egypt, and other locations, relying on peasant labor in the global countryside. The newly invented telegraph enabled European manufacturers to order cotton from rural India and have it delivered to their factories within six weeks.

Once the Civil War ended, exploitation of black Americans in the name of cotton did not cease. Southern plantation owners introduced sharecropping, and in this system freed slaves were not able to reach economic promise due to landowners controlling every aspect of crop cultivation, including buying crops at manipulative price points. In fact, elements of sharecropping resemble modern day debt bondage. American blacks also were enslaved through convict leasing, where blacks were often imprisoned for false charges or ridiculous “crimes” like speaking loudly in the company of white women, as well as debt servitude. Sharecropping was also a feature of cotton grown in other parts of the world, like in India. 

From Slave Labor to Sharecropping

Transitioning from slave labor to sharecropping and tenant farming expanded American cotton production. By 1870 America surpassed the pre-war 1860 harvest, by 1877 America surpassed its pre-war market share in Great Britain, and by 1891 the amount of cotton grown in the United States to double that of 1861. Cotton was the leading American export until 1937. Except during the Great Depression, the Southern white middle class continued to grow from from 1870 until 1950 due in no small part to cotton.

The global context around cotton also paints a bleak picture, showing that slavery and forced labor weren’t just features of cotton cultivation in America. European countries developed their own cotton colonies in other countries, like Russia in Central Asia and the British in India, Africa, and Egypt. Peasants were forced to grow cotton for export. When the post-war reconstruction caused cotton prices to drop, extreme poverty resulted in many locales, and the majority of the 19 million Indians who died in the famines of the late 1890s were cotton growers. And today the semi-military unit of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is perhaps the most important cotton producer in the world.