In the Land of Cotton/South USA

Cotton was king

at one time in the Southern economy and then it fell by the wayside to synthetics and soy which became the crop of choice. So much to my surprise as we were heading from Florida up through the center of Georgia we saw fields and fields of cotton growing. Rarely did we see soy growing anywhere, all the fields are back to cotton. So the demand is up, and synthetics must be less preferable.

My Mother picked cotton in the fields of Mississippi when she was a young girl in high school. She told me how difficult it was to learn and how she had to soaked her sore fingers at night after a day of picking. "If you don't pluck the white bowl out just right the surrounding sharp husk prick your fingers badly", she would tell me. Mom was paid 50 cents for a hundred pounds of cotton. It is amazing to think of the back breaking work that it was, and a young thin high school age young woman, out picking and carrying huge bags along with other field hands.

Then came the industrial revolution and now huge machines come by and pick the cotton. However, as you can see in some of the pictures a lot of cotton is left on the stalks left to rot. They roll the cotton up in large yellow bales for market. It is hard to think of cotton and the South without thinking of plantations and slavery. It is hard not to think of the suffering and inhumane treatment of people. There were artists who painted slaves and workers in the fields in the South. There are artists who paint workers world wide in different styles and with different meaning conveyed. I think of Thomas Hart Benton-The Cotton Pickers, Vincent Van Gogh-The Peat Fields, Diego Rivera-The Detroit Industry, Courbet-The Stone Breakers, Munch-Workers on The Way Home and others. Walt Whitman's poems are filled with references to laboring for others. Dorthea Lange's depression era photographs are unforgettable. There is a richness and honesty of man close to the land. There is an on going story of people involved with harvesting, hard work, and struggle-it is an interesting subject for artists of all kinds..from musicians, to actors, to dancers, and visual artists.