On the contrary, the invention of the cotton gin and mechanical spinning machines actually reinforced the archaic and brutal institutions of slavery in the Old South. Dr Richard Barbrook
Summer time, an’ the livin’ is easy,
Fish are jumpin’, an’ the cotton is high.
Oh, yo’ daddy’s rich an’ yo’ ma is good-lookin’,
So hush, little baby, don’t yo’ cry. Heward Du Bose, Summertime
For a time cotton was king of the US economy. Niall Ferguson, Civilisation: Is the West History? V Consumerism, Channel 4 2011
By 1860 Lancashire produced half the cotton in the world. The Genius of Invention I, BBC 2013
The Mississippi Delta was a booming region that thrived on cotton farming. Reginald D Hunter's Songs of the South III: Mississippi and Louisiana, BBC 2015
Britain was making a fortune from cotton grown by enslaved Africans. David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History III: A Moral Mission, BBC 2016
Cotton changed the world … The fearless team of engineers and industrialists brought the sea to landlocked Manchester. How the Victorians Built Britain s1e4: The Birth of the Machines, Channel 5 2018
Manchester: It was packed full of dark Satanic mills, churning out cotton by the millions of square metres. ibid.
Cotton could now be transported from Liverpool docks to Manchester in two hours … The world’s first intercity railway. ibid.
Huge feats of engineering were needed to conquer an unforgiving route. The Manchester to Liverpool railway was the first to tunnel beneath the city, the first to have signals, the first to have a timetable, the first to carry mail … It had to transport all that cotton to and from Manchester’s factories and mills. ibid.
At its peak, the Lancashire cotton industry had over 250,000 powered looms. ibid.
The mill workers lived a grim life. ibid.
They built one of the wonders of the modern world … the Manchester Ship Canal. ibid.
We live in a golden age of fashion. A time when almost anyone can buy the glamour and the lifestyle of the latest trends. Clothes are cheaper than ever, and last year we spent nearly £50 billion on them. But there’s a problem: all this cheap fashion is damaging our planet … The industry is accused of being one of the biggest polluters on the planet. Stacey Dooley: Fashion’s Hidden Secrets, BBC 2018
Uzbekistan: These dust storms are so vast they can be seen from space. They contain huge quantities of pesticides that have been washed into the Aral from the cotton farms and left on the seabed. ibid.
Cotton: Here is like just a regular shirt and a pair of jeans, right: it’s likely that it could have taken up to 20,500 litres [of water]. ibid.
Some in this industry are working to clean up fashion. ibid.