D. Clayton Brown - King Cotton in Modern America [2011][A]

Book Description
Publication Date: November 10, 2010
King Cotton in Modern America places the once kingly crop in historical perspective, showing how "cotton culture" was actually part of the larger culture of the United States despite many regarding its cultivation and sources as hopelessly backward. Leaders in the industry, acting through the National Cotton Council, organized the various and often conflicting segments to make the commodity a viable part of the greater American economy. The industry faced new challenges, particularly the rise of foreign competition in production and the increase of man-made fibers in the consumer market.
Modernization and efficiency became key elements for cotton planters. The expansion of cotton- growing areas into the Far West after 1945 enabled American growers to compete in the world market. Internal dissension developed between the traditional cotton growing regions in the South and the new areas in the West, particularly over the USDA cotton allotment program. Mechanization had profound social and economic impacts. Through music and literature, and with special emphasis placed on the meaning of cotton to African Americans in the lore of Memphis's Beale Street, blues music, and African American migration off the land, author D. Clayton Brown carries cotton's story to the present.

From the Author
I wanted to write about a subject with broad significance in rural America, and focus on the period since 1945. Little had been written about cotton since World War II, so I anticipated much original research, which was another objective in my consideration. It was important to provide a comprehensive coverage of the subject so readers could acquire a reasonable understanding of cotton in its fullest perspectives--cultural, political and economic. It was apparent that sweeping changes had occurred in cotton farming, particularly mechanization and its consequences, but an even broader theme became apparent--the decline of the old cotton culture and the struggle by the cotton industry to remain commercially viable in both the United States and the globalized world economy. The extent to which cotton affected the lives of people involved in its cultivation, marketing, processing--from field to fabric--was staggering. The subject proved to be rich in archival materials that had gone untouched. To research and write the story of cotton in its broadest implications proved to be challenging.

From the Inside Flap
How farming of the South's royal fiber expanded and changed under mechanization and competition

About the Author
D. Clayton Brown, Fort Worth, Texas, is professor of history at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. He is the author of Electricity for Rural America: The Fight for the REA, the children's book Dwight D. Eisenhower: The Space Race and Cold War, and Globalization and America Since 1945.