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Once in Europe, the textiles were sold for decidedly low prices, especially in Britain (which received ~80% of American cotton exports at the time).

The textile companies made a fortune. The plantation owners made a fortune. The shipping companies made a fortune. The workers barely made enough to survive on. The slaves weren't paid at all.

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After the cotton was processed in the factories, the paths of the newly made textiles split. Some - in all honesty, a low percentage - stayed in-country and were spread throughout the states as goods. Most, however, were shipped out of the country and across the ocean into Europe.

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Most factory workers were unmarried farm girls who worked in the mills during the day and received an education at night, while also being paid a wage and boarding in company housing. Some were older women with children whose family breadwinners didn't make enough money; these women (too poor for babysitters) often brought their children to work with them, where the kids were exploited for unpaid - often dangerous - labor. The industrial looms had no safety gear and didn't always run smoothly, so the children were often required to crawl into small spaces and remove the things that fell through the cracks or reach into tight places to fix damaged equipment. Hair and skirts often caught on and in the equipment, causing injuries; there was no Worker's Comp. The women weren't paid much, and if they complained, they could always be replaced by the thousands of immigrant workers flooding the country.

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In the factories, women and children worked in textile mills that turned the cotton into cloth and then into clothing, blankets, and other things. They worked with huge industrial looms that often broke or became damaged or had things stuck in them. Despite sounding simple, the work was dangerous and had no safety restrictions or gear.

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From the plantations, the cotton was transported to the factories. As technology developed, supplies stopped using the less-efficient route (down the Mississippi river, around Florida, up the east coast) and began taking advantage of their new options: steamboats to send cotton up the Ohio River to rendezvous with wagons (or straight to a wagon, depending on proximity to the rivers) that used newly improved roads to transport the cotton to the nearest railway station, from which it found its way north to the factories. Other routes included taking the cotton to Lake Erie (waterways or overland or both) and then through the canal and onto a railway; from there it headed to the factories in the cities.

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On plantations, the slaves worked every step of the cotton processing. They planted, cared for, harvested, cleaned, and sometimes even spun the cotton before it was shipped off.
Overseers, often promoted slaves or poor whites hired by plantation owners, kept the slaves working.

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The cotton was mostly harvested by hand in late July and was cleaned in the newly invented cotton gin.

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Typically in plantations owned by wealthy whites and worked by black slaves. The stretch of land known as the "Black Belt" had the most fertile soil for growing cotton and was the location of many of the plantations.