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The Last Great American Dynasty: 0:12-0:44

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The Last Great American Dynasty: 0:12-0:44

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"Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train
It was sunny
Her saltbox house on the coast
Took her mind off St. Louis
Bill was the heir to the Standard Oil name and money
And the town said, "How did a middle-class divorcée do it?"

The wedding was charming, if a little gauche
There's only so far new money goes"

The growth of cotton preparation of cotton made these individuals richer than they could have ever imagined, practically the whole world was dependent on the United States cotton, which brought in incredible amounts of money to these plantation and factory owners

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“You’re not my homeland anymore, so what am I defending now?”

When the production of cotton boomed in the United States, Great Britain became very dependent on our resources and products. We were used to being dependent on Great Britain, not the other way around, which was different but i'm sure felt like an accomplishment to the American citizens.

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"Band-aids don't fix bullet holes"

Though the North argued against slavery, they were aware of the fact that all of these new factories and mill towns demanded more slavery from the south, but they decided to turn a blind eye to it.

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"I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere"

Creating the Erie Canal and using steam boats saved the United States so much time and money. This allowed for much easier and cost-effective exports, especially regarding cotton.

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"They say I did something bad
But why's it feel so good?
Most fun I ever had
And I'd do it over and over and over again if I could
It just felt so good, good"

The factory owners tried to justify their decisions by making it look like this system kept the girls safe, but they knew they were not being compensated fairly and the conditions in those factories were more than unsafe. The owners knew these decisions were not smart nor fair but they decided to take advantage anyway, which is part of the reason why we still have a gender wage gap.

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"We team up, then switch sides like a record changer"

producing vast amount of cotton took lots of teamwork, so you think they would all kindly work together and evenly split profit but that was not the case. the plantation and factory owners had their workers doing all of the work and would keep all of the profit for them selves.

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"You knew our lives
Would never be the same
You held your head like a hero
On a history book page
It was the end of a decade
But the start of an age"

Eli Whitley is in deed on a history book page and did change the course of United States history when it came to the economy due to the revenue cotton brought in but also the demand for slaves and everything that could come after that because of this invention.

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"Rose garden filled with thorns"

This analogy can be used to demonstrate the different views of the planting and harvesting process. The plantation owners saw the fields of cotton as a rose garden, that would produce an abundance of goods and revenue. On the other hand, when picking the roses the stems are covered in thorns, similar to harvesting the cotton. The slaves and workers saw these fields more filled with thorns especially since they usually wouldn't profit in any way from this work.

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Prior to the dramatic increase of cotton the south had only a few ports along the Atlantic Ocean used for trading. When the cotton industry began to boom the demand for more ports rose exponentially. In 1812, the first steamboat to navigate the internal waterways of North America was invented. By 1817, there were 17 steamboats with regular routes of transportation on the Mississippi River. By 1860, more than 3,500 steam boats were in use. Another major transportation change, was the use of canals. Canals, specifically the Erie Canal, offered a much quicker, direct, and cheeper route of transport for all crops, but especially cotton.

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Throughout the whole cotton process there were many different groups involved. On the plantations, there was the plantation owners that funded, oversaw, and received most of the profit. in addition, many plantation owners hired workers to work in the fields if they did not have enough slaves. Most plantations had around 16-50 working slaves along with their families.

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The harvesting process consisted of the crop being hand-picked by slaves, indentured servants, and other plantation workers. Next, the crop is placed in a new technological invention that altered the course of the cotton economy for the future. This invention is known as the cotton gin. The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitley in 1794 that deseeded cotton easier and quicker than doing it by hand. This technology was able to clean the cotton by separating leaves, seeds, sticks, and stems during the process. This increased the need for laborers and eventually increased slavery.

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Though in the 1800s, cotton was sold for less than 10 cents, by 1860 the amount of cotton exported amounted to about $220 million dollars. These plantation and factory owners were some of the richest people in the world at this time. Though, the cotton was so profitable to the owners, the slaves did not receive any compensation and the workers made a very small amount of compensation during this time.

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Nearly all of the cotton produced in the United States was exported to Great Britain which made Great Britain heavily dependent on the United States, their resources, and southern slavery. The cotton would be transported through the waterways inside of the United States, through the Erie Canal, then across the Atlantic Ocean to different European countries, usually being Great Britain.

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Typically, the usual workers for these factories were low skilled immigrants or young women. This is when the Lowell system was adopted in many towns. In the Lowell system girls teen girls would live in a dormitory and work in the factories during the day, then be educated or attend church in the evenings. This was a way for the factory owners to have cheap labor but also a way to ensure safety for these young girls.

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While the growth of cotton was booming in the south, in the north there was a vast amount of factories developing across the states. In these textile factories the workers would mainly use large Spinning Jennys to make goods, usually using cotton imported from the south. Most of the time entire towns were devoted to these factories, like Lowell, Massachusetts.

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The cotton crop thrives in states with climates like the states of Virginia and the Carolinas. The seeds are planted in early spring then by late fall the crop is ready to be harvested. this average growing season is between 150-160 days. Around this time the cotton is hand picked, mainly by slaves, indentured servants, and other plantation workers. This requires a lot of manual labor, so typically cotton is grown on large farms called plantations. The black belt is known as a strip of fertile soil that has prime conditions for growing cotton.