Reynolds Hill, age 9, of Dotham, Ala., for his question:
WHO WERE THE FIRST TO GROW COTTON?
Nearly 8,000 years ago in Mexico, the Aztec Indians were probably the first to grow cotton for textile purposes. About 5,000 years ago the people in what is now Pakistan cultivated cotton. The Persians brought cotton growing methods from India.
The ancient people used cotton for clothing, for bindings for sandals and even for harnesses for elephants.
Greek and Roman travelers described cotton plants as the fleece of tiny lambs growing on trees. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about a tree in Asia that bore cotton that was "exceeding in goodness and beauty the wool of any sheep."
The army of Alexander the Great first brought cotton goods into Europe in the 300s B.C. The cloth costs so much that only the very rich could afford it. In the A.D. 700s, Muslim invaders brought cotton manufact uring processes to Europe. Italians and Spaniards wove some cotton, but the art spread northward slowly.
The English began to weave cotton in the 1600s. They imported raw cotton from the countries bordering the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Later they imported cotton from the southern colonies in America.
In America, early explorers found that Indians knew how to make cotton clothing. In the early 1600s, southern colonies began growing cotton. The colonists wove cotton into coarse cloth for their own use. Large scale cotton growing began in the late 1700s.
English manufacturers tried to keep cotton mill machinery out of the United States. They wanted the United States to sell its raw cotton to England and buy back finished cloth. An English textile worker and mechanic named Samuel Slater learned how these machines were made. He came to the United States in 1789 and supervised the building of cotton mills in New England in the 1790s. A mill he built in 1793 still stands at the Slater Mill Site in Pawtucket, R.I.
Cotton manufacturing in New England grew rapidly. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which made it possible to send more cotton to the mills.
The demand for cotton increased and the Southern cotton industry expanded. Cotton became so important to the South that people called it "King Cotton" and sang songs about it.
Traders brought slaves to the United States to provide cheap labor. The great plantations of the Old South were large, 2,000 to 3,000 acre, and had many slaves. But most Southern farmers worked for lower wages than that of workers in Northern mills.
By the 1920s, the South was producing more cotton cloth than New England. This move in the South continued through the 19409 and 1950s. Today, most cotton mills are located in southeastern states, near cotton farming areas. These states have ample power and the labor needed to run the mills.