Editing Cotton (section)

===United States===
{{Main|Cotton production in the United States|Black Belt in the American South}}
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| image1 = Cotton pickers and overseer around 1850.jpg
| image2 = Family of slaves in Georgia, circa 1850.jpg
| caption1 = Slaves picking cotton while being observed by an [[Plantation complexes in the Southern United States#Overseer|overseer]] on horseback, {{Circa|1850}}
| caption2 = Slaves with the cotton they had picked. Georgia, {{Circa|1850}}
| image3 = Adams & Bazemore Cotton Warehouse, 4th near Poplar, circa 1877 - DPLA - 7e9ab74033df525c16cfacddfb85955f.jpeg
| caption3 = Adams & Bazemore Cotton Warehouse, Macon, Georgia, {{Circa|1877}}
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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 the new textile industries of the Northeastern United States and northwestern Europe. In 1860 the slogan "[[King Cotton|Cotton is king]]" characterized the attitude of Southern leaders toward this [[monocrop]] in that Europe would support an independent [[Confederate states of America|Confederate States of America]] in 1861 in order to protect the supply of cotton it needed for its very large textile industry.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Owsley |first1=Frank Lawrence |title=The Confederacy and King Cotton: A Study in Economic Coercion |journal=The North Carolina Historical Review |date=1929 |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=371–397 |jstor=23514836 }}</ref>
Russell Griffin of California was a farmer who farmed one of the biggest cotton operations. He produced over sixty thousand bales.<ref name="auto">{{cite book |last1=Brown |first1=D. Clayton |title=King Cotton in Modern America: A Cultural, Political, and Economic History since 1945 |date=2011 |publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi |isbn=978-1-62846-932-5 }}{{page needed|date=November 2022}}</ref>
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 picker]]s were developed, cotton farmers needed additional labor to hand-pick cotton. Picking cotton 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."<ref>Rupert B. Vance, ''Human factors in cotton culture; a study in the social geography of the American South'' (U of North Carolina Press, 1929) [https://archive.org/details/humanfactorsinco00vancrich online free]
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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 the [[Deep South]].<ref name="auto"/> 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.