“It was work hard, git beatins and half fed... The times I hated most was pickin' cotton when the frost was on the bolls. My hands git sore and crack open and bleed” Mary Reynolds, slave narrative from the
Federal Writers' Project, www.slaveryinamerica.org

“What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton! No power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is King.” Pro-slavery
politician, Senator James H Hammond, South Carolina, 1858

“The manufacturing interest and the general interests are synonymous. The abolition of slavery would be in reality a universal good... I pray it may be an event at hand. The great body of manufacturers, uniting in the cause, will considerably facilitate and expedite it” The Interesting Narrative of the Life
of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. Vol. II, 1789, http://docsouth.unc.edu

Fortune Magazine, September 1931. Courtesy of The Culture Archive.

Low moral fibre; Cotton and slavery