Doooo iiiitttttt!!!! Lol

It happens to all of us! Makes us work harder and post more! Lol!!! Congratulations again! Hope you get your shirt soon!!!

@MichelleGar1 They said April first which makes me wonder....

@Lizard_of_Ahaz They got to pick the cotton to make the shirt first. First they have to plant the cotton . . . .

@WonderWartHog99 We see now, thanks for the clarification! Lol

@MichelleGar1 April is cotton picking month.

@WonderWartHog99 True, springtime!

@WonderWartHog99 Do we have to pick our own or do they do it for us?...

@Lizard_of_Ahaz Hand picking cotton is a painful experience. You have to let the cotton pickers do the cotton picking. People come out of cotton fields, looking at their hands saying "Dam! We need a machine."

This is where I digress into explaining white privilege and its effect on black farmers. Well, I would if it wasn't for those who scream it's not a thing.

@WonderWartHog99 Sounds like a cotton picking problem doesn't it?...

@Lizard_of_Ahaz Cotton wasn't a major thing in the Dixie until a cotton gin could remove the burrs from the cotton. People outside Dixie thought they'd invented the fluffy Martini. 🥴

@WonderWartHog99 Even before that it was the main crop.... The civil war was a disaster for the South because of that economic dependency on cotton revenues. When the North started blockading cotton shipments to Europe it became a problem so Europe looked towards other markets to supply the demand like Egypt and India which was a boon for those countries and the US cotton market never recovered....

@Lizard_of_Ahaz Blockade running was fairly common during both the Civil and Revolutionary wars. The cotton market came back after the war of northern aggression. What didn't come back is the rice market in the swamp lands of the Carolina's. The work was so brutal and disease was so common, only slaves could do it. Rice patties couldn't be worked by either machinery or draft animals. Prior to the war, they exported long grain rice to China that was considered the standard of excellence.

Today if you want to buy rice grown in Carolina, it'll cost you about $10 a pound. Slave labor isn't available to keep the price down. There are some people who will work in the rice patties here but they want to be paid for the amount of labor it takes to grow it.

Prior to the Civil War there were two major driving economic forces: cheap land, cheap labor.

Overall a destruction of Dixie's infrastructure combined with the elimination of super cheap labor (slaves) was the fatal blow for most of a century.

Today the comeback includes stealing the jobs of rust belt of the north, largely because they're anti-union in Dixie. That's the basis of the old motto "Save your confederate money; the South shall rise again."

@WonderWartHog99 Actually the aggression was on the part of the South who fired the first shots... And no the cotton market never came back to a sustainable level for the Southern economy. Blockade runners did get through but after a time it cost the South more in hulls than sales in Europe could bring in profits. With the volume down England and France the two largest markets for Southern cotton turned to other sources.... Share cropping and lack of slaves hit the South hard along with the carpet baggers who profiteered off what had been the richest of the plantation owners. Basically they were screwed... Production went up but the price was so low the profit was gone... Cotton seed was plentiful and cheap after the war and started to be pressed to make margarine...
[ldhi.library.cofc.edu]

@Lizard_of_Ahaz >Actually the aggression was on the part of the South who fired the first shots..

That's because the North insisted on keeping an island fort to guard the harbor that could shoot at southern warships and was supplied by the north.

Imagine the reaction the US would have today if Ellis Island had an Iraqi fort on it with Iraqi warships supplying it. Reasonably, you would expect the US to level the Iraqi fort on Ellis Island.

>And no the cotton market never came back to a sustainable level for the Southern economy.

Cotton came back so well that most of the cotton mills in the US were in Dixie, many powered by water wheels. Today most cotton mills are overseas because of cheaper labor. Some mills are still around near me.

Go ahead. Name a cotton mill in California or Michigan. I've been wrong before.

>Share cropping and lack of slaves hit the South hard along with the carpet baggers who profiteered off what had been the richest of the plantation owners.

Share cropping was the new slavery. Plantation owners got such a large cut of the crop the largely black sharecroppers lived hand to mouth existence. Additionally, plantation owners acted as the bank to provide supplies required to the sharecroppers that they were expected to pay back at the end of the year, often keeping double books to over charge them at the end of the year.

If the sharecropper knew what he owed and paid it in full, he could expect to hear "Let me look over these books again. I got some re-checking to do."

Land remained cheap and once a sharecropper got ahead of the game, they bought their own land and started their own farm. It's the major reason sharecropping in the south has largely died out.

>With the volume down England and France the two largest markets for Southern cotton turned to other sources

They didn't. Your source says the southern smugglers were so successful that:

> Notably, they [the British] also re-exported materials from the South to the North, because the Union also struggled from being cut off from direct trade with the Confederacy.

Also, according to your source, most of the wealth Brits made off the war was in cotton speculation.

>>. . . . as a result of the war, cotton speculation and brokerage, rather than trade in cotton itself, became immensely profitable for a number of merchants.

Your source doesn't mention anything about the price of cotton seed. Most gardeners agree growing any crop produces far more seeds than they can possibly use. Ever clean out a pumpkin? Same story for growing cotton.

@WonderWartHog99 Considering that fort was US property and a part of the country your saying "they insisted on keeping it" and being a part of the same country themselves shows the real problem here..... Treason, arrogance, and utter foolishness.... Actually though I am thinking we should cut the South loose at this point in history.... The rest of the US would be far better off without their constant stupidity....

@Lizard_of_Ahaz >Considering that fort was US property and a part of the country

The fort wasn't part of the Confederate States of America (CSA) once South Carolina left the union. At that point, the fort was part of some other country. It would be just like claiming if Iraq occupied Ellis Island, attacking Ellis Island and bombing it off the map for taking aim at US ships entering the harbor would be illegal property damage to Iraq.

>The rest of the US would be far better off without their constant stupidity....

The US would lose most of their rocket scientists. When the astronauts had problems, they didn't say "San Diego, we got a problem." Think Houston instead, which once was in the CSA. The rockets made for the US space program come out of Huntsville, Alabama (CSA) and launched in Florida (CSA).

Down the street from me, Boeing Aircraft is hiring all the dumb little aircraft mechanics.

>.... Treason, arrogance, and utter foolishness....

That's what the Brits said during the American revolution. Back then the Brits thought of Americans as stupid, clod hopping, back wood hicks.

If you look into it, Yankee Doodle Dandy was an insult aimed at the colonists by the Brits.

"It’s not just any insult, either. With “Yankee Doodle,” the Redcoats were delivering the most puerile, schoolyard insult in the schoolyard insult book. They were suggesting that American soldiers were gay.

Gay and bumbling, actually."

Source: "[nytimes.com];

@WonderWartHog99 Stupid justifac5t6ions for treason make no sense.

@Lizard_of_Ahaz >Stupid justifac5t6ion

Did you have an attack of pudgy paws or irony?

Yeah it took me almost 9 months can you believe that?... Just your average slacker here...