Rivoli's 'Travels Of A T-Shirt'

The many issues that cotton growers faced in Rivoli's, "Travels of a T-Shirt," weren't just localized to within the grower's. They were facing global competition with other countries that also produced cotton. While the United States initially was believed to be unable to produce the amount of cotton other countries could, they would later prove to be able to do so, even going as far as producing more than their competitors. This didn't come without its own set of problems, often of which included labor constraints, the nature of how cotton grew, and the economic scale of the work done to grow the cotton. This essay focuses on some of the key problems that the growers faced when engaging in large-scale cotton production and facing global

There is a justification to the use of slave labor, and it involves social and cultural views. To the whites, slaves were seen as inferior to them, which resulted in racism. This racism then led to the justification to use slave labor. It was this that allowed the south to obtain a large labor force without paying much. After the Civil War, a new form of labor called wage labor would appear, which would also be known as "sharecropping." Instead of paying money, the land owner would "provide the sharecroppers with housing and food (known as the furnish)" (Rivoli, 2009, pg. 20). While this wouldn't keep a worker from leaving in today's standards, it was acceptable, and it allowed the landowner to keep their labor force. The main issue with sharecroppers however came in terms of debt, a sharecropper had to pay their debts to the landowner. While they had the goal of owning their own land, "most sharecroppers could never pay their debts" (Slavery by another Name, 2012). It did not help that "unpredictable harvest, high interest rates, and unscrupulous landlords" (Slavery by another Name, 2012) kept sharecroppers in debt. Laws were developed which also "status of the sharecropper in favor of the landowner" (Rivoli, 2009, pg. 20). This "changing of status" allowed landowners to keep their crops and at the same time provide capital in cotton production.

According to figure 3.5 in Rivoli's book, "the price for cotton was at its lowest by the early 1930s" (Rivoli, 2009, pg. 33). It wasn't just the producers who were assuming the risks of the market but the government as well, and it would fall upon them to help the producers to respond to the dramatic price changes accordingly. It wouldn't be until the New Deal did the government respond to the problem by introducing the Agricultural Adjustment Act to the producers. Originally meant to "protect sharecroppers from poverty as well as help commodity prices to stabilize" (Rivoli, 2009, pg. 33), it had mixed results. The sharecroppers instead found themselves ousted by the landowners themselves who found it easier to just take all of the acreage for themselves. Unfortunately for the sharecroppers, it did not help matters when tractors were introduced, and just like the end of the Bracero Program, sharecroppers were essentially no longer