A recent investigation reveals that child exploitation and forced labor are being used to pick cotton on dozens of farms in ...

which easily separated cotton fiber from its seeds, was merely a motor for a global economic machine. Slavery was its fuel. Many stakeholders benefited from the cotton economy — plantation ...

Slavery and cotton production became synonymous with ... Planters wanted gang labor, like they had used under slavery, to work the fields; freed people wanted to own and work their own land.