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143-729: Charles William Macune (May 20, 1851 – November 3, 1940) was the head of the Southern Farmers' Alliance from 1886 to December 1889 and editor of its official organ, the National Economist, until 1892. He is remembered as the father of a failed cooperative enterprise by the Farmers' Alliance in Dallas, Texas , and as the creator of the Sub-Treasury Plan , an effort to provide low-cost credit to farmers through

286-621: A First transcontinental railroad across the U.S. was delayed somewhat by the American Civil War before being finally completed in May 1869. There followed a rush to complete additional railway lines to open up new frontier areas for economic development, a situation in which the United States government and the great railroad companies of the day maintained a common interest. Rather than directly undertaking railroad construction as

429-404: A boll , or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae . The fiber is almost pure cellulose , and can contain minor percentages of waxes , fats , pectins , and water . Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds. The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around

572-470: A public works project of the federal government, Congress granted cash loans and grants of public land to subsidize construction. Some 129 million acres (52.2 million hectares) of public land was ultimately transferred from public ownership to the privately owned railways as part of this process. A great part of this massive stockpile of land needed to be converted into cash by the railways to finance their building activities, since railroad construction

715-740: A secret society in 1885. The groups were joined under a new name, the National Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union of America. This was one of the first steps in unifying farmers along the American cotton belt. The demands of the Southern Alliance were similar to those of its northern counterpart. They pressed for abolition of national banks and monopolies, free coinage of silver , issuance of paper money (Greenback or Fiat money), loans on land, establishment of sub-treasuries, income tax acts, and revision of tariffs. In 1889

858-411: A broad sense, the purposes of the Farmers' Alliance ... cover today a remedy for every evil known to exist and afflict farmers and other producers, and in the future should cover every contingency that may arise, presenting evil to be combatted by means of organization; they are accumulative and ever changing, as the enemy assumes a new guise. Included among these concerns to greater or lesser extent were

1001-583: A cave near Tehuacán , Mexico, have been dated to as early as 5500 BC, but this date has been challenged. More securely dated is the domestication of Gossypium hirsutum in Mexico between around 3400 and 2300 BC. During this time, people between the Río Santiago and the Río Balsas grew, spun, wove, dyed, and sewed cotton. What they did not use themselves, they sent to their Aztec rulers as tribute, on

1144-544: A commercial chain in which raw cotton fibers were (at first) purchased from colonial plantations , processed into cotton cloth in the mills of Lancashire , and then exported on British ships to captive colonial markets in West Africa , India , and China (via Shanghai and Hong Kong). By the 1840s, India was no longer capable of supplying the vast quantities of cotton fibers needed by mechanized British factories, while shipping bulky, low-price cotton from India to Britain

1287-734: A deficit spiral that led to the country declaring bankruptcy in 1876, a key factor behind Egypt's occupation by the British Empire in 1882 . During this time, cotton cultivation in the British Empire , especially Australia and India, greatly increased to replace the lost production of the American South. Through tariffs and other restrictions, the British government discouraged the production of cotton cloth in India; rather,

1430-616: A farmer who farmed one of the biggest cotton operations. He produced over sixty thousand bales. Cotton remained a key crop in the Southern economy after slavery ended in 1865. Across the South, sharecropping evolved, in which landless farmers worked land owned by others in return for a share of the profits. Some farmers rented the land and bore the production costs themselves. Until mechanical cotton pickers were developed, cotton farmers needed additional labor to hand-pick cotton. Picking cotton

1573-487: A great deal of resources would have been required, likely restricting its cultivation to the elite. In the first to third centuries CE, recovered cotton fragments all began to mirror the same style and production method, as seen from the direction of spun cotton and technique of weaving. Cotton textiles also appear in places of high regard, such as on funerary stelae and statues. During the Han dynasty (207 BC - 220 AD), cotton

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1716-602: A group of black farmers organized themselves in Houston County, Texas as the Alliance of Colored Farmers of Texas — forerunner of the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union, commonly known as the "Colored Farmers' Alliance." A declaration of principles was adopted which identified the new organization as a mutual aid society dedicated to education, improvement of agricultural efficiency, and

1859-404: A labor source to produce upon the land they held without the necessity of paying cash wages. In practice, however, a system of virtual slavery emerged, in which poor whites and freed blacks became enmeshed in the usury of merchants and landowners providing essential supplies on credit. A crop-lien system emerged in which future crops would be mortgaged to merchants or landowners (often one and

2002-471: A larger and more powerful organization, unity was stalled over terms of the union, including the composition of the governing bodies, divergent views on non-white membership, and disagreement over program owing to divergence between Southern and Northern farmers' economic interests. At its December 1889 convention in St. Louis, the National Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America changed its name again, this time to

2145-562: A legal practice in Beaumont . This was followed in 1900 by a move back to Central Texas and a return to the practice of medicine for a brief interval. Macune began to study for a position in the ministry of the Methodist church and in June 1901 he was licensed to preach. Macune accepted his first Methodist pastorate at Copperas Cove, Texas , in 1902. He spent the rest of his working life as

2288-431: A lower cost. The limited effects of the local policies of the Alliance did little to address the overall problem of deflation and depressed agricultural prices. By 1886, tensions had begun to form in the movement between the political activists, who promoted a national political agenda, and the political conservatives, who favored no change in national policy but a "strictly business" plan of local economic action. In Texas,

2431-618: A lower rate, at times 20 to 30 percent below the regular retail price. Such stores achieved only limited success, however, since they faced the hostility of wholesale merchants who sometimes retaliated by temporarily lowering their prices in order to drive the Alliance stores out of business. Additionally, the Farmer's Alliance established its own mills for flour , cottonseed oil , and corn , as well as its own cotton gin . Such facilities allowed debt-laden farmers, who often had little cash to pay third-party mills, to bring their goods to markets at

2574-525: A million. Iowa , Minnesota , and the Dakota Territory showed parallel population gains. New counties, villages, and towns sprang up by the hundreds throughout the region and a speculative bubble emerged around the buying and selling of farmland and urban lots. Population continued to surge throughout the region well into the decade of the 1880s. Unfortunately for those who chose to attempt to farm new lands in such places as Kansas, Nebraska,

2717-462: A more equitable tax system on mortgage property, pass income tax law, abolish free travel passes to public officials, and regulate interstate commerce by Congress. By the time of the organization's 2nd Annual Convention, held early in October 1881, the organization claimed a membership of 24,500. A year hence, at the 3rd Convention of October 1882, some 2,000 locals and a total membership of 100,000

2860-563: A network of government-owned commodity warehouses. A Democrat , Macune opposed both the formation of the People's Party as well as the nostrum of free silver which served as the basis of the 1896 fusion of the Democratic and Populist parties. Both a doctor and a lawyer in his earlier years, although he received formal training in neither profession, Macune ended his life as a Methodist minister, serving in pastorates in various towns of

3003-559: A new group was established there by a former member of the Lampasas County Alliance group. The Northern Alliance's constitution and its precedent of non-partisan activity were closely followed and in short order a dozen local groups had been established upon that model. This Texas group was incorporated in 1880 as the "Farmers' State Alliance" and it subsequently expanded throughout the Central and Northern parts of

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3146-422: A new market for British goods, while the capital amassed from Bengal after its 1757 conquest was used to invest in British industries such as textile manufacturing and greatly increase British wealth. British colonization also forced open the large Indian market to British goods, which could be sold in India without tariffs or duties , compared to local Indian producers who were heavily taxed , while raw cotton

3289-501: A new revenue system that was biased in favour of higher value cash crops such as cotton and indigo , providing state incentives to grow cash crops, in addition to rising market demand. The largest manufacturing industry in the Mughal Empire was cotton textile manufacturing , which included the production of piece goods , calicos , and muslins , available unbleached and in a variety of colours. The cotton textile industry

3432-413: A preacher in a series of small Southwestern towns, including a brief missionary stint in Mexico. Macune retired to Fort Worth, Texas , where he died on November 3, 1940, at the age of 89. Farmers Alliance One of the goals of the organization was to end the adverse effects of the crop-lien system on farmers in the period following the American Civil War . The Alliance also generally supported

3575-685: A province he calls Khotan in Turkestan, today's Xinjiang , where cotton was grown in abundance. The word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century, and English a century later. Cotton fabric was known to the ancient Romans as an import, but cotton was rare in the Romance-speaking lands until imports from the Arabic-speaking lands in the later medieval era at transformatively lowered prices. The earliest evidence of

3718-607: A publishing house at that same time, the Alliance Publishing Company. These would become the official organ and official publishing house of the Southern Alliance, with Macune deeply involved in the affairs of each. In 1890 Macune initiated a new concept called the Sub-Treasury Plan . This proposal called for the establishment of a network of government warehouses for the storage of non-perishable agricultural commodities (such as cotton), to be operated at minimal cost to participating farmers. Farmers making use of

3861-506: A series of odd jobs, which took him to the states of Kansas and California . In the summer of 1871 the 20-year-old Macune moved to what would become his home state of Texas , where he worked as a cattle drover in the northern part of the state. In September 1874 Macune entered the field of journalism for the first time, launching a weekly broadsheet in the town of Burnet called the Burnet Bulletin. Macune stayed safely to

4004-461: A temptation for Macune's father and he went West alone to seek his fortune. Instead of striking rich, the elder Macune contracted cholera and died, leaving the infant Charles to be raised alone by his mother in the town of Freeport, Illinois . Charless went to work at the age of ten for a neighboring farmer. At fifteen he left the farm to become an apprentice to a pharmacist —an occupation which he found more conducive. Macune left pharmacy to work

4147-428: A time now needed to strike deals with the Alliance men for 1,000 bale sales. This solidarity was usually short-lived, however, and could not withstand the retaliation from the commodities brokers and railroads, who responded by boycotting the Alliance and eventually broke the power of the movement. The Alliance had never fielded its own political candidates. It preferred to work through the established Republican Party in

4290-622: Is ineffective against many cotton pests, such as plant bugs , stink bugs , and aphids ; depending on circumstances it may still be desirable to use insecticides against these. A 2006 study done by Cornell researchers, the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy and the Chinese Academy of Science on Bt cotton farming in China found that after seven years these secondary pests that were normally controlled by pesticide had increased, necessitating

4433-663: Is native to the Indian subcontinent. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia : Cotton has been spun, woven, and dyed since prehistoric times. It clothed the people of ancient India, Egypt, and China. Hundreds of years before the Christian era, cotton textiles were woven in India with matchless skill, and their use spread to the Mediterranean countries. In Iran ( Persia ), the history of cotton dates back to

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4576-574: The Achaemenid era (5th century BC); however, there are few sources about the planting of cotton in pre-Islamic Iran. Cotton cultivation was common in Merv , Ray and Pars . In Persian poems, especially Ferdowsi 's Shahname , there are references to cotton ("panbe" in Persian ). Marco Polo (13th century) refers to the major products of Persia, including cotton. John Chardin , a French traveler of

4719-651: The Cameron Herald, in 1886. Macune was active in Democratic Party politics from the middle 1870s, when he was the chairman of a county organization. Macune's politics were unremarkable, as he considered him well within the Jeffersonian mainstream, based as it was upon the political equality of small-scale male property-holders and a limited vision of the role of government. Around the time of his second newspaper purchase, Macune became involved in

4862-649: The Deep South . To acknowledge cotton's place in the history and heritage of Texas, the Texas Legislature designated cotton the official "State Fiber and Fabric of Texas" in 1997. China's Chang'e 4 spacecraft took cotton seeds to the Moon's far side . On 15 January 2019, China announced that a cotton seed sprouted, the first "truly otherworldly plant in history". Inside the Von Kármán Crater ,

5005-473: The Delhi Sultanate . During the late medieval period, cotton became known as an imported fiber in northern Europe, without any knowledge of how it was derived, other than that it was a plant. Because Herodotus had written in his Histories , Book III, 106, that in India trees grew in the wild producing wool, it was assumed that the plant was a tree, rather than a shrub. This aspect is retained in

5148-532: The Industrial Revolution in Britain provided a great boost to cotton manufacture, as textiles emerged as Britain's leading export. In 1738, Lewis Paul and John Wyatt , of Birmingham , England, patented the roller spinning machine, as well as the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing cotton to a more even thickness using two sets of rollers that traveled at different speeds. Later, the invention of

5291-469: The James Hargreaves ' spinning jenny in 1764, Richard Arkwright 's spinning frame in 1769 and Samuel Crompton 's spinning mule in 1775 enabled British spinners to produce cotton yarn at much higher rates. From the late 18th century on, the British city of Manchester acquired the nickname " Cottonopolis " due to the cotton industry's omnipresence within the city, and Manchester's role as

5434-605: The Knights of Labor , the leading industrial trade union organization of the day. Ten state organizations were fully functioning by 1890 and new members flooded into the Farmers' Alliance at the rate of 1,000 per week. Kansas alone boasted 130,000 members, closely followed by Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, and the national office optimistically projected 2 million members in the near future. The idea emerged to put this enthusiastic and growing membership to work to advance

5577-655: The Reconstruction era , who "promised each head of family forty acres of land and a mule if only he would vote right." Moreover, Turner noted, the liberated slaves of the South had been promised " social equality with the whites, and a great many other things which, since he has found out better, he neither needs nor wants." Turner argued that relations between the races were fundamentally benevolent now that black farmers had recognized that "his old master" had "almost invariably" been on hand to provide "the best advice" regarding agricultural problems and had very often been

5720-618: The Southwestern United States . Charles William Macune was born May 20, 1851, at Kenosha, Wisconsin . His father, who worked as a blacksmith and was a Methodist minister, hailed originally from New York state ; his mother was Canadian . The family lived in the Midwestern states of Iowa and Illinois for over a decade before Charles' birth. In 1852 the lure of the California gold rush proved too much of

5863-545: The 17th century who visited Safavid Persia , spoke approvingly of the vast cotton farms of Persia. Cotton ( Gossypium herbaceum Linnaeus) may have been domesticated 5000 BC in eastern Sudan near the Middle Nile Basin region, where cotton cloth was being produced. Around the 4th century BC, the cultivation of cotton and the knowledge of its spinning and weaving in Meroë reached a high level. The export of textiles

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6006-511: The 1840s. Indian cotton textiles, particularly those from Bengal , continued to maintain a competitive advantage up until the 19th century. In order to compete with India, Britain invested in labour-saving technical progress, while implementing protectionist policies such as bans and tariffs to restrict Indian imports. At the same time, the East India Company's rule in India contributed to its deindustrialization , opening up

6149-494: The 1900s. While cotton fibers occur naturally in colors of white, brown, pink and green, fears of contaminating the genetics of white cotton have led many cotton-growing locations to ban the growing of colored cotton varieties. The word "cotton" has Arabic origins , derived from the Arabic word قطن ( qutn or qutun ). This was the usual word for cotton in medieval Arabic . Marco Polo in chapter 2 in his book, describes

6292-504: The 19th century. India's cotton-processing sector changed during EIC expansion in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. From focusing on supplying the British market to supplying East Asia with raw cotton. As the Artisan produced textiles were no longer competitive with those produced Industrially, and Europe preferring the cheaper slave produced, long staple American, and Egyptian cottons, for its own materials. The advent of

6435-444: The Alliance "calamity" howlers, who are traveling from State to State, county to county, town to town, township to township, schoolhouse to schoolhouse, not for the good of the people, but for the money they make and in hopes of political promotion. The people should organize at once in opposition to this gigantic scheme. As a widespread movement consisting of three independent branches and existing for more than two decades, reduction of

6578-437: The Alliance into an independent political party. He then moved to actively expand the organization by successfully negotiating a merger with the rival Louisiana Farmers' Union. The groups were joined under a new name, the National Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union of America. Macune remained the head of the organization through the end of 1889, at which time it claimed a membership of 1.2 million. In September 1887, Macune

6721-572: The Alliance was dominated by these local groups, with state-level bodies floundering. The locals did organize themselves at the state level, however, with delegates gathering in founding conventions in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan between January 1881 and the middle of 1882. The new movement strove to protect farmers from the capitalistic and industrial powers of monopolies (such as railroads) and unsympathetic public officials. The Northern Alliance sought to enact

6864-432: The Alliance was reborn as the People's Party (commonly known as the "Populists"), and included both Alliance men and Knights of Labor members from the industrialized Northeast. The Populists, who fielded national candidates in the 1892 election, essentially repeated all the demands of the Alliance in its platform. Cotton Cotton (from Arabic al-qutn ) is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in

7007-668: The British to cheap calico and chintz cloth on the restoration of the monarchy in the 1660s. Initially imported as a novelty side line, from its spice trading posts in Asia, the cheap colourful cloth proved popular and overtook the EIC's spice trade by value in the late 17th century. The EIC embraced the demand, particularly for calico , by expanding its factories in Asia and producing and importing cloth in bulk, creating competition for domestic woollen and linen textile producers. The impacted weavers, spinners, dyers, shepherds and farmers objected and

7150-423: The Dakotas, and Eastern Colorado , the unusually rainy years of the early 1880s which had buoyed land prices gave way to a protracted drought beginning in the summer of 1887, bringing an end to the giddy, speculative boom. With crops failing, artificially inflated land prices plummeted; Eastern capital began to withdraw from the region. Banks collapsed and credit dried up. A decade of hard times followed, marked by

7293-479: The Democratic Union Labor - Farmers Alliance combination in politics. One of their circulars from 1891 reads: The only way for the farmers to meet the Alliance secret political society is with a secret society the object of which shall not be to nominate men for office, but to assist in educating the people and making them thoroughly acquainted with the wants of all the people and the fallacies of

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7436-633: The Egyptian cotton industry. By the time of the American Civil war annual exports had reached $ 16 million (120,000 bales), which rose to $ 56 million by 1864, primarily due to the loss of the Confederate supply on the world market. Exports continued to grow even after the reintroduction of US cotton, produced now by a paid workforce, and Egyptian exports reached 1.2 million bales a year by 1903. The English East India Company (EIC) introduced

7579-472: The Farmers' Alliance in his newspaper's pages. State and local organizations became moribund. A fall of wheat and livestock prices following the harvest of 1884 reinvigorated the Farmers' Alliance and activity again exploded. In 1885 a new Alliance group was established for the Dakota Territory , where wheat reigned supreme, followed by a state organization for Colorado , as interest spread westward. New national principles were composed and mailed out to

7722-542: The Farmers' Alliance to a few universal objectives is problematic. As Southern Alliance leader C.W. Macune noted in 1891, the agenda of the organization was both amorphous and dynamic, a response to local problems and conditions: No man ... can give a perfect definition of the purposes of the Farmers' Alliance; and he who attempts a definition simply gives his own personal conception of the subject, which may be more or less valuable, according to whether his field of observation and his accuracy of judgment are good or otherwise. In

7865-580: The Knights claimed 125,000 members and had lodges in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio. Founders included Masons , Oddfellows and Pythians . Its program included trade reciprocity, protection of American industries, just pensions for Union veterans and disenfranchisement of those who accepted or offered a bribe for a vote. The Knights were adamant in their opposition to what they called

8008-461: The Midwest and Democratic Party in the South — although these often proved fickle in supporting the agenda of the Alliance. The Alliance failed as an economic movement, but it is regarded by historians as engendering a "movement culture" among the rural poor. This failure prompted an evolution of the Alliance into a political movement to field its own candidates in national elections. In 1889–1890,

8151-495: The Mughal era. It was reported that, with an Indian cotton gin, which is half machine and half tool, one man and one woman could clean 28 pounds (13 kg) of cotton per day. With a modified Forbes version, one man and a boy could produce 250 pounds (110 kg) per day. If oxen were used to power 16 of these machines, and a few people's labour was used to feed them, they could produce as much work as 750 people did formerly. In

8294-685: The National Executive Committee of the Southern Alliance. His participation in the Populist movement at an end, Charles Macune remained in Washington, D.C., as the editor of the Evening Star until 1895. He then returned to Cameron, Texas, with his wife and six children and established a short-lived newspaper there. Upon the failure of that publication, Macune gained a state license to practice law and in 1896 he opened

8437-468: The National Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union united with a large rival organization known as the Agricultural Wheel to form a new group called the National Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America. Negotiations were begun to further unify forces by joining this newly expanded Southern Alliance with its Northern Alliance counterpart. While merger of the two organizations would have created

8580-483: The National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union — the name by which it would be known for the rest of its existence. The Southern Farmers' Alliance was unapologetic about its color bar banning black farmers from membership. The Alliance's National Secretary-Treasurer J.H. Turner, himself the son of a former slave-owner , wrote that in fact the liberated slaves' "worst enemies" had been the Northern carpetbaggers of

8723-412: The Northern and Southern hemispheres, but a large proportion of the cotton grown today is cultivated in areas with less rainfall that obtain the water from irrigation. Production of the crop for a given year usually starts soon after harvesting the preceding autumn. Cotton is naturally a perennial but is grown as an annual to help control pests. Planting time in spring in the Northern hemisphere varies from

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8866-486: The People's Party (commonly known as the "Populists") through the fall of 1892, when he was embroiled in a scandal by allowing an associate to make use of the Farmers' Alliance mailing list for the distribution of Democratic campaign literature. In the aftermath of this affair and amidst charges of financial improprieties with regards to the operation of The National Economist, Macune resigned his posts as editor and member of

9009-477: The United States, even with the use of humans as slave labor. The gin that Whitney manufactured (the Holmes design) reduced the hours down to just a dozen or so per bale. Although Whitney patented his own design for a cotton gin, he manufactured a prior design from Henry Odgen Holmes, for which Holmes filed a patent in 1796. Improving technology and increasing control of world markets allowed British traders to develop

9152-532: The abandonment of entire communities. A sense of deep discontent with the current state of affairs was felt by the farmers who remained. The agrarian and plantation -based economy of the Southern United States was virtually destroyed by the American Civil War . Those who had their fortunes invested in Confederate bonds and currency saw them lost, as did those whose wealth was tied up in

9295-471: The backbone of the southern American economy. In the United States, cultivating and harvesting cotton became the leading occupation of slaves . During the American Civil War , American cotton exports slumped due to a Union blockade on Southern ports , and because of a strategic decision by the Confederate government to cut exports, hoping to force Britain to recognize the Confederacy or enter

9438-424: The basis of a new indigenous industry, initially producing Fustian for the domestic market, though more importantly triggering the development of a series of mechanised spinning and weaving technologies, to process the material. This mechanised production was concentrated in new cotton mills , which slowly expanded until by the beginning of the 1770s seven thousand bales of cotton were imported annually, and pressure

9581-645: The beginning of February to the beginning of June. The area of the United States known as the South Plains is the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world. While dryland (non-irrigated) cotton is successfully grown in this region, consistent yields are only produced with heavy reliance on irrigation water drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer . Since cotton is somewhat salt and drought tolerant, this makes it an attractive crop for arid and semiarid regions. As water resources get tighter around

9724-434: The calico question became one of the major issues of National politics between the 1680s and the 1730s. Parliament began to see a decline in domestic textile sales, and an increase in imported textiles from places like China and India . Seeing the East India Company and their textile importation as a threat to domestic textile businesses, Parliament passed the 1700 Calico Act, blocking the importation of cotton cloth. As there

9867-427: The capsule and seeds sit inside the Chang'e 4 lander. Successful cultivation of cotton requires a long frost -free period, plenty of sunshine, and a moderate rainfall, usually from 50 to 100 cm (19.5 to 39.5 in). Soils usually need to be fairly heavy , although the level of nutrients does not need to be exceptional. In general, these conditions are met within the seasonally dry tropics and subtropics in

10010-455: The coast for large supplies of fish. The Spanish who came to Mexico and Peru in the early 16th century found the people growing cotton and wearing clothing made of it. The Greeks and the Arabs were not familiar with cotton until the Wars of Alexander the Great , as his contemporary Megasthenes told Seleucus I Nicator of "there being trees on which wool grows" in "Indica." This may be a reference to "tree cotton", Gossypium arboreum , which

10153-439: The conservative "Jeffersonian" party line of the dominant Democratic Party , but his fledgling publication nonetheless succumbed to the inevitable financial pressures and was terminated in the spring of 1875. Not long after the failure of this project, Macune soon moved to San Saba, Texas , where he made money working as a house-painter while studying medicine with a local physician. He moved to Junction City, Texas , by 1878 and

10296-452: The current state of affairs was felt by the small-holding and tenant farmers of the South. The National Farmers' Alliance, commonly known as the "Northern Alliance," was established on March 21, 1877, by a group of members of the Grange movement from New York state . The group sought to organize in order to fight what they deemed the unfair practices of the railroad transportation mill, for

10439-497: The dual-roller gin was prevalent throughout the Mediterranean cotton trade by the 16th century. This mechanical device was, in some areas, driven by water power. The earliest clear illustrations of the spinning wheel come from the Islamic world in the eleventh century. The earliest unambiguous reference to a spinning wheel in India is dated to 1350, suggesting that the spinning wheel was likely introduced from Iran to India during

10582-521: The early 19th century had the fifth most productive cotton industry in the world, in terms of the number of spindles per capita. The industry was initially driven by machinery that relied on traditional energy sources, such as animal power , water wheels , and windmills , which were also the principal energy sources in Western Europe up until around 1870. It was under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century that steam engines were introduced to

10725-650: The early 19th century, a Frenchman named M. Jumel proposed to the great ruler of Egypt, Mohamed Ali Pasha , that he could earn a substantial income by growing an extra-long staple Maho ( Gossypium barbadense ) cotton, in Lower Egypt , for the French market. Mohamed Ali Pasha accepted the proposition and granted himself the monopoly on the sale and export of cotton in Egypt ; and later dictated cotton should be grown in preference to other crops. Egypt under Muhammad Ali in

10868-412: The emergence of the so-called "share system" or "cropping system," in which non-landowners paid rent for the use of the land they farmed in the form of a fixed percentage of the output generated. This system in theory served the needs of landowners and poor farmers alike, as the sharecroppers would have the incentive to produce more and benefit from increased output while landowners would be provided with

11011-405: The end of the organization's first year. The Northern Alliance made its greatest inroads in areas which were stricken by drought in 1881, including the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota. Growth was slower in states less severely affected, including as Illinois , Wisconsin , and Michigan . Local organizations proved easier to launch than did statewide bodies and in its first years

11154-596: The endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungry." (See Vegetable Lamb of Tartary .) Cotton manufacture was introduced to Europe during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily . The knowledge of cotton weaving was spread to northern Italy in the 12th century, when Sicily was conquered by the Normans , and consequently to

11297-648: The enterprise. Although Macune was opposed to the idea, the board of directors of the Exchange decided to construct a massive new four-story building as substantial cost, which resulted in severe cash-flow difficulties which ultimately resulted in the Exchange's termination in December 1889. In March 1889 Macune made use of a $ 10,000 loan from a wealthy Texas Alliance member and launched a new publication, The National Economist , in Washington, D.C. He also started

11440-540: The entire readership of Western Rural and a 5th Convention was successfully held in November 1886. A system of dues was established, thereby funding and energizing the state organizations. The program of the organization became steadily more radical in this interval, including demands for government ownership of one or more of the intercontinental railroad lines as well as for unlimited coinage of silver at its historic ratio to gold. Connections began to be forged with

11583-413: The establishment of a cotton monoculture , as merchants demanded this easily storable, readily marketable commodity to be produced for the satisfaction of debt. Not accidentally, the requirement by merchants for cotton production made production of adequate food and fodder for sustenance virtually impossible, further deepening the debt of the farmer to his merchant-creditor. A sense of deep discontent with

11726-536: The establishment of chartered local organizations, beginning in Filley, Nebraska and soon spreading throughout the American Midwest. Dues were not collected in the earliest phase of Northern Alliance's existence, with editor George financing the group's launch — a fact which spurred growth. Within a month more than 200 locals had been chartered, with claims made that 1,000 local groups had been established by

11869-471: The facilities could then draw low-interest loans of up to 80% of the value of their goods held in storage, payable in U.S. Treasury notes. The Sub-Treasury idea became a main policy initiative of the Southern Farmers' Alliance after 1890 and was a primary cause of the group's move into partisan politics through a third party called the People's Party . A loyal Democrat, Macune grudgingly supported

12012-498: The farmers of the Alliance to produce more efficiently, with less financial loss to middlemen. Macune had a grand vision for the Farmers' Alliance, but one in which the organization served an economic and educational function rather than a political one. As head of the Executive Committee Macune was quick to stifle an impending split of the organization threatened by the desire of some Texas members to transform

12155-590: The fifth millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley civilization , as well as fabric remnants dated back to 4200 BC in Peru . Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production that led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today. Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tonnes or 110 million bales annually, accounting for 2.5% of

12298-592: The fourth largest GM cotton crop area of 2.6 million hectares in 2011. The initial introduction of GM cotton proved to be a success in Australia ;– the yields were equivalent to the non-transgenic varieties and the crop used much less pesticide to produce (85% reduction). The subsequent introduction of a second variety of GM cotton led to increases in GM cotton production until 95% of the Australian cotton crop

12441-435: The government regulation of the transportation industry, establishment of an income tax in order to restrict speculative profits, and the adoption of an inflationary relaxation of the nation's money supply as a means of easing the burden of repayment of loans by debtors. The Farmers' Alliance moved into politics in the early 1890s under the banner of the People's Party , commonly known as the "Populists." The quest to achieve

12584-511: The government to buy land. The Alliance also tried to do away with foreign competitors who owned land in America. It wanted to directly elect federal judges and senators. The Alliance gained powerful political strength and controlled elections in states in the South and the West. In the South, the agenda centered on demands of government control of transportation and communication, in order to break

12727-422: The grounds that this would alleviate the contraction in the money supply that led to falling prices and scarcity of credit (see gold standard ). The Alliance wanted to change the way Americans worked by pushing for an eight-hour workday . It did away with national banks so private, local banks could be formed. The Alliance wanted an income tax, the freedom to coin its own money and the freedom to borrow money from

12870-546: The group's goals through a political organization. The roots of the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, commonly known as the "Southern Alliance," dated back to approximately 1875, when a group of ranchers in Lampasas County , Texas organized as a Texas Alliance as a means of cooperating to apprehend horse thieves, round up stray animals, and cooperatively purchase large stores of supplies. This group gradually moved into more extensive action in response to

13013-528: The gutted financial market to make loans was grossly insufficient for the needs of the region, exemplified by the 123 counties in Georgia with no banks whatsoever even in 1895. Merchants, finding a sellers' market, extracted extraordinary profits through inflated prices and usurious credit terms. A new mode of production replaced the slave-based large-scale agriculture of the pre-war years. Now it would be small-scale agrarian enterprise that would proliferate and

13156-568: The heart of the global cotton trade. Production capacity in Britain and the United States was improved by the invention of the modern cotton gin by the American Eli Whitney in 1793. Before the development of cotton gins, the cotton fibers had to be pulled from the seeds tediously by hand. By the late 1700s, a number of crude ginning machines had been developed. However, to produce a bale of cotton required over 600 hours of human labor, making large-scale production uneconomical in

13299-477: The main pests in commercial cotton are lepidopteran larvae, which are killed by the Bt protein in the transgenic cotton they eat. This eliminates the need to use large amounts of broad-spectrum insecticides to kill lepidopteran pests (some of which have developed pyrethroid resistance). This spares natural insect predators in the farm ecology and further contributes to noninsecticide pest management. However, Bt cotton

13442-417: The movement also made attempts to unite the two Alliance organizations, along with the Knights of Labor and the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union, into a common movement. The efforts and unification proved futile, however. As an economic movement, the Alliance had a very limited and short term success. Cotton brokers who had previously negotiated with individual farmers for ten bales at

13585-528: The name Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union. A national newspaper was launched by the organization called The National Alliance. The organization rapidly spread across the American South , establishing a presence in every Southern state of the union. The Colored Farmers' Alliance sponsored cooperative stores at which members could obtain necessary goods at reduced prices, published newspapers which attempted to educate members of

13728-405: The name for cotton in several Germanic languages, such as German Baumwolle , which translates as "tree wool" ( Baum means "tree"; Wolle means "wool"). Noting its similarities to wool, people in the region could only imagine that cotton must be produced by plant-borne sheep. John Mandeville , writing in 1350, stated as fact that "There grew there [India] a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on

13871-600: The national group in this period, such a relationship was more theoretical than practical. The adoption of a dues system in the middle part of the decade forced the Texas group to closely consider its organizational affiliation. Charles W. Macune , the son of a Methodist preacher, emerged as the leader of this Texas organization when he was elected Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Texas organization in 1886. Macune immediately stifled an impending split of

14014-480: The new textile industries of the Northeastern United States and northwestern Europe. In 1860 the slogan " Cotton is king " characterized the attitude of Southern leaders toward this monocrop in that Europe would support an independent Confederate States of America in 1861 in order to protect the supply of cotton it needed for its very large textile industry. Russell Griffin of California was

14157-491: The one to "protect and defend him in his business affairs." Such a view of the indebted and impoverished black sharecroppers of the South, also typical of Southern whites of the era, did nothing to reassure African-American farmers that their concerns were shared by their European-American counterparts. With their presence from the Southern Farmers' Alliance barred due to racism , African-American farmers were forced to establish an organization of their own. In December 1886

14300-538: The organization as to new farming techniques, and in some places raised money to help support the underfunded segregated black schools of the region. The Colored Farmers' Alliance's organizational strength peaked in 1891, with some 1.2 million members claimed. The Alliance was opposed by a group called the Knights of Reciprocity , founded in Garden City, Kansas in winter of 1890 by a group of Republicans including Jesse Taylor, D. M. Frost and S. R. Peters. By 1895

14443-620: The organization threatened by a faction inside the Texas Alliance pushing to launch the group as an independent political party. He then united the group around a vision of organizational independence from the Northern Alliance coupled with a program of active expansion. As a first step towards this end, Macune negotiated a merger with the Louisiana Farmers' Union, a group established in 1880 and transformed into

14586-406: The ownership of African American slaves . Great landed estates were broken up or rendered unworkable by the lack of a free labor supply and the flood of land sold on the marked depressed prices and reduced the economic possibilities of those who counted their dollars in acres. The region faced enormous costs to replace the buildings destroyed in the war and the factories looted. The capacity of

14729-514: The perceived abuses towards smaller operators engaged in by land speculators and massive cattle operations. The organization grew and was organized on a statewide basis in 1878 but was almost immediately killed when it attempted to enter the political field and was torn asunder by antagonistic factions favoring the Democratic and Greenback parties. In 1879 the influence of the Northern Alliance made itself felt in Parker County, Texas when

14872-471: The plan. The failure of the Democratic Party to endorse this initiative was instrumental in causing the Farmers' Alliance to become directly involved in partisan politics through an organization largely of its own making, the People's Party . The Southern Alliance also demanded reforms of currency, land ownership, and income tax policies. Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance stressed the demand for free coinage of large amounts of silver . Political activists in

15015-642: The politics of the Southern Farmers' Alliance . He became a charter member of the Cameron Sub-Alliance (local group) early in 1886 and was named a delegate to the Texas state convention in August of that year, where he wowed his peers and was elected Chairman of the State Executive Committee. Thereafter, Macune became deeply involved in Alliance activities, seeking to rapidly expand the formation of cotton cooperatives to enable

15158-435: The power of corporate monopolies. From 1890 it also included a demand for a national "Sub-Treasury Plan" calling for the establishment of a network of government-owned warehouses for the storage of non-perishable agricultural commodities, operated at minimal cost to participating farmers. Farmers would then be permitted to draw low interest loans of up to 80% of the value of warehoused goods, payable in U.S. Treasury notes, under

15301-560: The question of exploitative terms of credit, insufficient money supply to sustain the economic needs of society, super-profits extracted by merchants, millers, and other middlemen, systemically unfavorable terms of trade levied upon small-scale agricultural shippers by the railroad industry, negative impacts on land prices caused by speculation. The accomplishments of the Farmers' Alliance are numerous. For example, many Alliance chapters all set up their own cooperative stores, which bought directly from wholesalers and sold their goods to farmers at

15444-475: The raising of funds for collective benefits for "sick or disabled members, or their distressed families." The initial form of the organization was that of a secret society . In February 1887 the group was chartered under the laws of Texas as the Alliance of Colored Farmers. This was followed by a convention in Lovelady, Texas held on March 14, 1888, at which the group was redefined as national in scope under

15587-410: The raw fiber was sent to England for processing. The Indian Mahatma Gandhi described the process: In the United States, growing Southern cotton generated significant wealth and capital for the antebellum South, as well as raw material for Northern textile industries. Before 1865 the cotton was largely produced through the labor of enslaved African Americans. It enriched both the Southern landowners and

15730-472: The reform of the tax system, and for the legalization of Grange-sponsored insurance companies. This first organization proved largely ineffectual but does seem to have provided the inspiration for the first effective Alliance group, which was established on April 15, 1880, by newspaper editor Milton George in Chicago . George's paper, Western Rural, gave the new organization public exposure and inspired

15873-616: The region. In the Meroitic Period (beginning 3rd century BCE), many cotton textiles have been recovered, preserved due to favorable arid conditions. Most of these fabric fragments come from Lower Nubia, and the cotton textiles account for 85% of the archaeological textiles from Classic/Late Meroitic sites. Due to these arid conditions, cotton, a plant that usually thrives moderate rainfall and richer soils, requires extra irrigation and labor in Sudanese climate conditions. Therefore,

16016-662: The rest of Europe. The spinning wheel , introduced to Europe circa 1350, improved the speed of cotton spinning. By the 15th century, Venice , Antwerp , and Haarlem were important ports for cotton trade, and the sale and transportation of cotton fabrics had become very profitable. Under the Mughal Empire , which ruled in the Indian subcontinent from the early 16th century to the early 18th century, Indian cotton production increased, in terms of both raw cotton and cotton textiles. The Mughals introduced agrarian reforms such as

16159-481: The same) in exchange for credit for current purchases. Written contracts made these loans legally enforceable and those so enmeshed frequently found themselves forced to pay inflated prices at high rates of interest. If the value of the credit exceeded the cash value of the crop, the arrangement was automatically rolled over for another year and a never-ending cycle amounting to a condition of perpetual servitude resulted. Moreover, this crop-lien system contributed to

16302-514: The scale of ~116 million pounds (53,000 tonnes) annually. In Peru , cultivation of the indigenous cotton species Gossypium barbadense has been dated, from a find in Ancon, to c.  4200 BC , and was the backbone of the development of coastal cultures such as the Norte Chico , Moche , and Nazca . Cotton was grown upriver, made into nets, and traded with fishing villages along

16445-572: The split reached a climax in August 1886 at the statewide convention in Cleburne . The political activists successfully lobbied for passage of a set of political demands that included support of the Knights of Labor and the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886 . Other demands include changes in governmental land policy, and railroad regulation. The demands also included a demand for use of silver as legal tender , on

16588-402: The state and into the neighboring Indian Territory (today's Oklahoma). By the end of 1885 this growing organization claimed a membership of approximately 50,000, scattered between more than 1200 local groups, known as "Sub-Alliances." During the early 1880s this Texas Farmers' State Alliance was considered to be a loose part of the Northern Alliance organization. Owing to the lack of dues of

16731-756: The use of cotton in the Old World , dated to 5500 BC and preserved in copper beads, has been found at the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh , at the foot of the Bolan Pass in ancient India , today in Balochistan Pakistan. Fragments of cotton textiles have been found at Mohenjo-daro and other sites of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization , and cotton may have been an important export from it. Cotton bolls discovered in

16874-471: The use of pesticides at similar levels to non-Bt cotton and causing less profit for farmers because of the extra expense of GM seeds. However, a 2009 study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stanford University and Rutgers University refuted this. They concluded that the GM cotton effectively controlled bollworm. The secondary pests were mostly miridae (plant bugs) whose increase was related to local temperature and rainfall and only continued to increase in half

17017-442: The villages and then taken to towns in the form of yarn to be woven into cloth textiles, was advanced by the diffusion of the spinning wheel across India shortly before the Mughal era, lowering the costs of yarn and helping to increase demand for cotton. The diffusion of the spinning wheel, and the incorporation of the worm gear and crank handle into the roller cotton gin, led to greatly expanded Indian cotton textile production during

17160-506: The villages studied. Moreover, the increase in insecticide use for the control of these secondary insects was far smaller than the reduction in total insecticide use due to Bt cotton adoption. A 2012 Chinese study concluded that Bt cotton halved the use of pesticides and doubled the level of ladybirds, lacewings and spiders. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) said that, worldwide, GM cotton

17303-543: The war. The Lancashire Cotton Famine prompted the main purchasers of cotton, Britain and France , to turn to Egyptian cotton. British and French traders invested heavily in cotton plantations. The Egyptian government of Viceroy Isma'il took out substantial loans from European bankers and stock exchanges. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, British and French traders abandoned Egyptian cotton and returned to cheap American exports, sending Egypt into

17446-413: The world's arable land . India is the world's largest producer of cotton. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years. There are four commercially grown species of cotton, all domesticated in antiquity: Hybrid varieties are also cultivated. The two New World cotton species account for the vast majority of modern cotton production, but the two Old World species were widely used before

17589-582: The world, economies that rely on it face difficulties and conflict, as well as potential environmental problems. For example, improper cropping and irrigation practices have led to desertification in areas of Uzbekistan , where cotton is a major export. In the days of the Soviet Union , the Aral Sea was tapped for agricultural irrigation, largely of cotton, and now salination is widespread. Cotton can also be cultivated to have colors other than

17732-552: The world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds. The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable , and durable textile . The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated to

17875-529: The world. A long-term study on the economic impacts of Bt cotton in India, published in the Journal PNAS in 2012, showed that Bt cotton has increased yields, profits, and living standards of smallholder farmers. The U.S. GM cotton crop was 4.0 million hectares in 2011 the second largest area in the world, the Chinese GM cotton crop was third largest by area with 3.9 million hectares and Pakistan had

18018-523: The yellowish off-white typical of modern commercial cotton fibers. Naturally colored cotton can come in red, green, and several shades of brown. The water footprint of cotton fibers is substantially larger than for most other plant fibers. Cotton is also known as a thirsty crop; on average, globally, cotton requires 8,000–10,000 liters of water for one kilogram of cotton, and in dry areas, it may require even more such as in some areas of India, it may need 22,500 liters. Genetically modified (GM) cotton

18161-426: Was GM in 2009 making Australia the country with the fifth largest GM cotton crop in the world. Other GM cotton growing countries in 2011 were Argentina, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and Costa Rica. Cotton has been genetically modified for resistance to glyphosate a broad-spectrum herbicide discovered by Monsanto which also sells some of the Bt cotton seeds to farmers. There are also

18304-484: Was a costly undertaking. New settlement had to be attracted to the virgin lands west of the Missouri River , which had been previously regarded by the public as worthless to the needs of agriculture due to insufficiencies of the soil as well as the arid climate. Millions of advertising dollars were spent by the railway companies promoting the agricultural development of the land which they had to sell. This effort

18447-559: Was a source of income for families across the South. Rural and small town school systems had split vacations so children could work in the fields during "cotton-picking." During the middle 20th century, employment in cotton farming fell, as machines began to replace laborers and the South's rural labor force dwindled during the World Wars. Cotton remains a major export of the United States, with large farms in California, Arizona and

18590-468: Was certified by the Texas state medical examiner as fit to practice medicine the next year. Over the next several years Macune worked as a physician in several Central Texas towns, landing in Cameron , in 1881. There Macune's medical practice flourished and he began to invest in local real estate, including farm properties. Macune also went together with another local doctor and purchased a local newspaper,

18733-421: Was claimed. This proved to be a high-water mark for the organization, however, as prosperity returned to Midwestern agriculture in 1883 and the 4th Convention was poorly attended and no convention was held at all in 1884. With work to do and money to be made, early enthusiasm in the new radical reform organization fell precipitously. Even National Secretary Milton George lost heart, publishing less and less news of

18876-459: Was developed to reduce the heavy reliance on pesticides. The bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) naturally produces a chemical harmful only to a small fraction of insects, most notably the larvae of moths and butterflies , beetles , and flies , and harmless to other forms of life. The gene coding for Bt toxin has been inserted into cotton, causing cotton, called Bt cotton , to produce this natural insecticide in its tissues. In many regions,

19019-401: Was grown by Chinese peoples in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan . Egyptians grew and spun cotton in the first seven centuries of the Christian era. Handheld roller cotton gins had been used in India since the 6th century, and was then introduced to other countries from there. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, dual-roller gins appeared in India and China. The Indian version of

19162-418: Was imported from India without tariffs to British factories which manufactured textiles from Indian cotton, giving Britain a monopoly over India's large market and cotton resources. India served as both a significant supplier of raw goods to British manufacturers and a large captive market for British manufactured goods. Britain eventually surpassed India as the world's leading cotton textile manufacturer in

19305-465: Was instrumental in launching the Farmers' Alliance Exchange of Texas , a flagship cooperative purchasing agency for the Alliance located in Dallas . The exchange attempted to boost farmers' incomes by purchasing their crop at higher prices through the removal of a layer of middlemen, as well as by reducing their costs through bulk purchases of supplies for its members. Macune served as business manager of

19448-451: Was invented in India during the early Delhi Sultanate era of the 13th–14th centuries, came into use in the Mughal Empire some time around the 16th century, and is still used in India through to the present day. Another innovation, the incorporation of the crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared in India some time during the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire. The production of cotton, which may have largely been spun in

19591-443: Was no punishment for continuing to sell cotton cloth, smuggling of the popular material became commonplace. In 1721, dissatisfied with the results of the first act, Parliament passed a stricter addition, this time prohibiting the sale of most cottons, imported and domestic (exempting only thread Fustian and raw cotton). The exemption of raw cotton from the prohibition initially saw 2 thousand bales of cotton imported annually, to become

19734-555: Was one of the sources of wealth for Meroë. Ancient Nubia had a "culture of cotton" of sorts, evidenced by physical evidence of cotton processing tools and the presence of cattle in certain areas. Some researchers propose that cotton was important to the Nubian economy for its use in contact with the neighboring Egyptians. Aksumite King Ezana boasted in his inscription that he destroyed large cotton plantations in Meroë during his conquest of

19877-422: Was planted on an area of 25 million hectares in 2011. This was 69% of the worldwide total area planted in cotton. GM cotton acreage in India grew at a rapid rate, increasing from 50,000 hectares in 2002 to 10.6 million hectares in 2011. The total cotton area in India was 12.1 million hectares in 2011, so GM cotton was grown on 88% of the cotton area. This made India the country with the largest area of GM cotton in

20020-400: Was put on Parliament, by the new mill owners, to remove the prohibition on the production and sale of pure cotton cloth, as they could easily compete with anything the EIC could import. The acts were repealed in 1774, triggering a wave of investment in mill-based cotton spinning and production, doubling the demand for raw cotton within a couple of years, and doubling it again every decade, into

20163-603: Was responsible for a large part of the empire's international trade. India had a 25% share of the global textile trade in the early 18th century. Indian cotton textiles were the most important manufactured goods in world trade in the 18th century, consumed across the world from the Americas to Japan . The most important center of cotton production was the Bengal Subah province, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka . The worm gear roller cotton gin , which

20306-461: Was time-consuming and expensive. This, coupled with the emergence of American cotton as a superior type (due to the longer, stronger fibers of the two domesticated native American species, Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense ), encouraged British traders to purchase cotton from plantations in the United States and in the Caribbean . By the mid-19th century, " King Cotton " had become

20449-607: Was to be rewarded, particularly after the Panic of 1873 left many unemployed and seeking a new start. Settlers began to flood into the Midwest and Northern Great Plains in response to the railway companies' blandishments. Populations skyrocketed. The state of Kansas grew from a population of just under 365,000 to nearly a million people during the 1870s. The number of inhabitants in Nebraska nearly tripled, rising to nearly half

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