Technical Change in Cotton Production in the United States, 1925–1960

By 1950 cotton had emerged as one of California's leading crops and California had become an important cotton producing state. The institutional and environmental settings associated with cotton cultivation in California differed markedly from those found in the Cotton South. Both institutional conditions, such as the size of farms, and environmental factors, such as the region's dry weather during the harvest season, help explain the more rapid mechanization of picking in California.

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Southern Tenancy, Machines, and Production Scale on the Eve of the Cotton Picker’s Arrival

Heinicke¹

1999

Social Science History

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A fundamental characteristic of the southern United States before World War II was the separate, and lagging, economic path taken by that region relative to the rest of the nation. The South was particularly slow to advance in agricultural science and technology. Both contemporary investigators and recent scholarship have indicted southern institutions for delaying development in southern agriculture (Street 1957; Whatley 1985, 1987). Were sharecropping and tenancy, institutional arrangements that characterized the southern plantation system, responsible for retarding southern economic development? Despite the large amount of scholarly attention that has been focused on these issues, this question remains unanswered.

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Technical Change in Cotton Production in the United States, 1925–1960

Cited by 4 publications

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Mechanizing cotton production in the American south: The tractor, 1915–1960

Mechanizing cotton production in the American south: The tractor, 1915–1960

The Rise of the Cotton Industry in California: A Comparative Perspective

Southern Tenancy, Machines, and Production Scale on the Eve of the Cotton Picker’s Arrival

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