Alabama’s history and economy have been driven by cotton production, which began with Native Americans and was revolutionized by the Industrial Revolution. The invention of the cotton gin and slavery fueled Alabama’s growth as a top cotton-producing state, but the Civil War and the end of slavery led to a shift to sharecropping. Alabama’s cotton industry declined in the 20th century due to cotton weevils and the migration of black workers, leading to a shift to other industries like soybeans and poultry.
Alabama was one of many cotton-producing states in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been nicknamed “The Cotton State” due to its central location in South Dixie’s Cotton Belt. Cotton has dominated Alabama’s economy and has driven its history and the structure of society.
Early Native Americans grew cotton, and Spanish and English settlers grew cotton in Florida and Virginia. Farmers and botanists have experimented with different varieties, sometimes crossing strains of cotton to produce hardier breeds. Throughout the 1700s, cotton was a cottage industry: Colonists grew small quantities of cotton near their homes and spun small quantities for their own use.
The Industrial Revolution brought about several changes to cotton production. In the late 1700s, English inventors developed powerful, automated methods for spinning raw cotton and wool into yarn. These contraptions, like the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, and power loom, revolutionized the textile industry. Many people wanted to wear clothes made from the new shiny yarns, and cotton production couldn’t keep up.
In 1793, inventor Eli Whitney patented his cotton gin, a machine that performed the time-consuming task of separating the seeds from the cotton. The technology spread quickly, and knockoffs of the Whitney cotton gin popped up all over the country. In 1795, a man named Joseph Collins began growing cotton on a farm near Mobile, Alabama. Collins’ success set the stage for Alabama to transition into one of the top cotton-producing states in the country.
After local Indian tribes were forced off their lands in 1816, settlers from Georgia and the Carolinas came to Alabama to grow cotton in the region’s rich soil. They brought with them the forced labor system that fueled agriculture throughout the South. In 1819, Alabama officially became a state; farmers shipped 16,000 bales of cotton from Mobile that year. In 1821, Alabama was exporting $3,000,000 US dollars (USD) of high-quality cotton.
The state’s cotton exports increased exponentially in the following decades. In 1839, Mobile shipped 440,000 bales of cotton, half of the cotton exports for the entire country. More sophisticated equipment, the use of fertilizers, and agricultural schools facilitated the expansion of the cotton industry, but slavery was the key ingredient. Cotton growing was a labor-intensive process, and landowners depended on their slave populations to produce huge crops each year for nothing more than minimal costs of room and board in return. By 1860, Alabama’s population had increased to 964,000; nearly half were slaves.
The Civil War devastated the Alabama cotton industry. Soldiers pillaged cotton fields and blockaded southern ports, and exports fell sharply. When the North won the war, slavery was outlawed. Farmers replaced slavery with a tenant system in which former slaves and landless whites worked small tracts of the plantation owner’s land. Plantation owners expected tenants to pay all farm costs themselves and receive rent money and 50% of the crop – this system, known as sharecropping, often left the tenants deeply in debt.
Even with this system of cheap labor, it took the Cotton State 30 years to return to pre-Civil War production levels. The 1890s were a high point for the American cotton industry; exports hovered around 3,000,000 bales. The US government opened agricultural offices to better coordinate cotton production, but often ignored smaller operations.
The 20th century was the beginning of the end of Alabama’s cotton state title. Cotton weevils arrived in Alabama in the 20th and tenant farmers were particularly hard hit; many blacks began migrating to better opportunities in the North. Plantation farmers realized they needed to diversify and started investing in other industries. Cotton production moved west, and Alabama agriculture shifted to soybeans, poultry, and beef—the remaining cotton plantations became large mechanized operations. Alabama is still among the top 1911 cotton producing states.
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