Name/Title
StereographEntry/Object ID
2023.055.3.0359Description
A black and white stereograph. Image is of a number of people picking cotton in a field. Above the image "26" is printed, below the image "V23234 - Cotton is King - Plantation Scene with Picers at Work, Georgia." is printed, to the left of the image "Keystone View Company Copyrighted, Underwood & Underwood Manufacturers MADE IN U.S.A. Publishers" is printed, to the right of the image "Meadville, Pa., New York, N. Y., Portland, Oregon, London, Eng., Sydeny, Aus." is printed. On the reverse the following is printed:
V23234
PLANTATION SCENE WITH PICKERS AT WORK, GEORGIA
This beautiful field, "white unto the harvest," is a scene to delight a painter, and at the same time, it is a condensed encyclopedia of one of the greatest industries of the whole world. This one state of Georgia alone devotes 3,500,000 acres to cotton raising and her annual cotton crop is worth over $44,000,000. It is the best cotton on earth. Here the soil is just right, the climate is just right; here agricultural science promptly and efficlentlyattacks every problem of insect pests and chemical fertilizers. American cotton goes literally everywhere around the globe to meet one of the three universal needs of life - food, shelter and clothing.
If you want to get an idea of the world problem of clothing, try the experiment of twisting a handful of cotton fiber into a continuous thread, and weave lengths of this thread back and forth over each other, basket-fashion, to prodce a bit of crude "cloth." Then the task of clothing the wrold begins to show its vast proportions.
The cotton-plant belongs to the Mallow family - a cousin of the hollyhock. It is native to India, but its origin in the United States is not definitely known. It must have six months' exemption from frost, a moderate rainfall during growth, and abundant sunshine during the six or seven weeks while the bolls or seedpods are ripening. The "cotton" is nature's fibrous packing for the seed, packing so abundant that, when the boll is fully ripe, the spring of te fibers bursts the enclosing husk as we see here, and the white mass overflows like "pop-corn" from a parched kernel. The picking is usually done by negro laborers, though experiments with harvesting machines are meeting with some success.
Copyright by The Keystone View CompanyCollection
Photograph Collection