...PICKING COTTON, COLLECTING PAINS (Socio-economic Condition of Cotton Picking Women in South Punjab) Researcher: Amjad Nazeer Oxfam GB, Islamabad (Pakistan) (October 24, 2012) 0 CONTENTS Executive Summary………………………………………………………….……….……...…2 The Euphoria of Agri-economy: ……………………………………………...….…………..7 Higher Yield - Between Myth and Reality: ..........................................................................................8 The Poison Business: ………………………………….……………………………………….9 Dealing in Pesticides: ….…………………………………………………………………......10 Socio-Economic Condition of Cotton Pickers: …………………………………………....11 Cotton Picking and Extended Agri-tasks: …………………………………….……..…….18 Bargaining Vulnerabilities: ………………………………………………………………….19 Clever Calculations to Rob off Picker’s Labour: ……………………..…….…………..…20 Picking Cotton in Poisonous Fields:…………………………………..…………..…..……23 Growers and Dealers attitude towards Pickers: …………………………..………..……..27 Labour Laws and Cotton Pickers: ……………………………………………………..……29 Concluding Thoughts and Recommendations: …………………..…….….………..…….29 End Notes and references: ………………………………………..……………….…………34 Bibliography: …………………………………………………….……………….………..…36 1 Executive Summary Approximately, seven million women are engaged in cotton picking across Pakistan. More or less, one third of them come from South Punjab. The incidence of poverty in rural South Punjab is estimated to be the highest after Baluchistan and parts of Sindh, with women’s condition...
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...American Civil war. During this time slavery was at an all time high in the south. Cotton became King and had social and economic repercussions throughout the south and rest of the world. It also had a large impact on the lives of slaves along with the lives of non slaves in the southern states. Cotton was in high demand in the beginning of the 1800’s. This was caused by Britain and the Northern states industrial revolutions need for cotton. Coastal plantations needed a new crop to replace indigo. Long staple sea island cotton was able to replace it. The hand cranked gins were effective at removing the seeds. The back country wanted to get in on the cotton trade. The...
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...Slaves worked hours and hours without stopping even if they did their slave masters would whop or beat them with branding iron, brutal whipping, the worst punishment was cruel executions-lynuching and burning. Large plantations had field hands and house servants performed task such as cooking, cleaning, and driving while the fields hands labored for up to 20 hours a day clearing land, planting seed, and harvesting crops. Although enslaved men and women sometimes could exercise a degree of autonomy in their work such as on rice plantations in the South Carolina field hands typically worked in a gang labor system, under which large groups of enslaved laborers toiled under the supervision of an overseer. The division of labor on most plantations was gender-based, with women typically in charge of duties such as sewing, cooking, quilting, cleaning the house, supervising the children, and serving as midwives though many enslaved women worked in the fields as...
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...The class visited the cotton gin in Missouri. At the gin the class learned about the particular processes that take place at the gin. The overall main process that takes place at the gin is the separating of the cotton seed from the lint. The class saw the process from separation to packaging at the end of the line. To start the process the cotton is delivered to the gin by a type of gin truck called a module truck that picks up the bales of cotton from the fields. (Modern cotton pickers bale cotton as if it were hay; each bale is called a module.) The module trucks back the cotton up to an escalator type machine, also known as a roller that moves the modules to be unwrapped from its module and then broken down from its bale shape. (The plastic module wrapping is recycled by the gin) The next step is getting the cotton to about 7% moisture. The dryer the cotton the easier it is to work with and to store. Most cotton gins use gas fired dryers. The cotton is also cleaned and some material is extracted. Burs, stems, and sticks are removed from the cotton. The next step can be considered the most important step in the process. The cotton is separated from the cotton seed. This is done by a “gin stand”. The cotton enters a roll box where the lint is removed from the seed. The seeds fall to the bottom of the gin stand while the cotton fibers are brushed off the saws that separated them to begin with. The lint cotton goes through another cleaner where it is brushed again to remove...
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...order to help themselves and their families survive, women and children are sold either into labor or into the commercial sex industry in areas such as prostitution or pornography. The enslavement of African people in the Americas by the nations and peoples of Western Europe, created the economic engine that funded modern capitalism. Therefore it comes as no surprise that most of the major corporations that were founded by Western European and American merchants prior to roughly 100 years ago, benefited directly from slavery.Many countries are still continuing to complete these horrendous actions of slavery. Also, there are companies that require their workers to complete actions in the field. For example, the workers at Toy’s R Us, pick cotton in a cotton field in order to provide the cotton for the stuffed animals and toys. To begin with, In Nepal, many of their citizens are forced to work. For example, many of the women are forced to be prostitutes and have sex with others for money. Many of these girls, go into this type of work because of social inequality and/or they are compelled by economic deception. In Nepal, high-level decision makers, lawmakers and politicians at the local level are often accused of being the protector of the traffickers. Many commentators blame the lack of legal enforcement arguing that policies are sound in Nepal but not their implementation and that political commitment is required to implement public policies. Also, if a slave is being held captive...
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...As a requirement for class we were supposed to interview someone in a field of our interest. I chose Page Cotton because of his fantastic history in helping shape DePauw University athletics into what it is today. I asked him to provide information on his path and gathered a lot of information on how he got to where he is today. He was a professor, a coach, athletic director, and now, senior advisor to the President, Brian W. Casey, at DePauw University. "I graduated from Springfield College in 1969 and ended up right at DePauw with a head coaching job for the men's soccer team." "With coaching the soccer team 39 years I had a record of 390-190-33." He also served as the men's tennis coach seven seasons, basketball coach for three seasons, and filled in for some games for the women's basketball team. Mr. Cotton was also a professor of kinesiology during his coaching career and he actually obtained the Medora C. Adams professor award. After he retired from coaching, he served as an athletic director for 15 years. With the success Mr. Cotton brought to the university, therefore was offered the position as the senior advisor after retiring from the athletic director position in 2012. After talking about Mr. Cotton’s background at DePauw University we then talked...
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...Since times of slavery in the United States cotton has meant big business to entrepreneurs in America. Whether it be used in clothes, home furnishings and even in the American dollar, cotton is a major product in many everyday things that we use. No one knows exactly how old cotton is. Although scientists have recovered bits of cotton believed to be dated back over 7,000 years ago! Cotton was first spun by machinery in England in 1730. The industrial revolution in England and the invention on the cotton gin in the U.S. paved the way for the important place cotton holds in the world today. Because of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, within ten years the value of the U.S. cotton crop rose from $150,000 to more than $8 million. Cotton grows in warm climate and most of the world’s cotton is grown in the U.S., Uzbekistan, the People’s Republic of China and India. In America, the major cotton-producing states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, Florida, Kansas, and Virginia. So needless to say America is definitely a major contributor to the cotton used in our everyday lives. Location is important, but the point of this essay isn’t to tell you all about the facts of cotton. Although cotton has brought in a lot of revenue for all countries involved, what is the cost paid by the citizens and workers? In September thousands of children in Uzbekistan...
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...slave narratives? There is only one visible bias in the slave narratives and that is that only one point of view is presented in regards to the notion of slavery. 3. Why are the slave narratives so important? The slave narratives are important as they allow historians to gain insight into slavery and the social/political viewpoints of both European and African American inhabitants. 4. Outline the daily lives of slaves as depicted in the narratives? The slaves worked on plantations from sunrise to sundown growing cotton and tobacco. Young slave children served as entertainment for white children, and overall slaves were used to serve the daily needs and wants of white settlers. 5. What was the importance of cotton to the plantation owners and what role did slavery play in this? Cotton was a large, prosperous farming ideal that was the majority export from southern plantation owners. Approximately 90% of income was produced from cotton. The slaves farmed the cotton and were in charge of picking and growing it. 6. What were some of the punishments and why were they inflicted? Jennie, a slave, ate a biscuit from a room in her owners house and was caught. She was then beaten by a broom and cat-of-nine-tails. Salt was then rubbed inot her wounds for extra infliction of pain. 7. What classes were there in white society? There were two main classes in white society, that being wealthier whites and then poor whites who were unable to afford the penance of buying and owning a slave...
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...Largest and Modern Cotton Ginning & Pressing Machinery Manufacturer in India * World class Delinting and Decorticating machinery manufacturing * World class machining of components and parts for various applications * All types of electrical panels to meet various industrial needs * High quality structural fabrication for buildings and machinery applications etc. * Manufacturing of various other machineries, components and parts as per drawings * High quality mechanical conveyors and elevators * Pneumatic conveying, dust / waste handling systems and humidification systems * Engineering and construction projects * Hydraulic cylinders, Power packs & Manifolds for various applications Bajaj is the only company in the world producing machineries for all cotton ginning technologies i.e Double Roller, Saw Gin & Rotobar, all Pressing technologies i.e. Down Packing, Up Packing & Horizontal Packing, as well as Seed Cleaning, Delinting & Decorticating, apart from general engineering fabrication, machining, intelligent electrical panel manufacturing and various other engineering activities. The company is on high growth path and adding various items to its fold consistently yoy. Company is having extensive facilities for following: 1. Engineering Designs 2. Machining 3. Fabrication 4. Assembly B) Trading Cotton Trading : Domestic and Exports Bajaj Group of Industries are starting a new " Cotton Export Division" at...
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...have been artificially inserted instead of the plant acquiring them through pollination. The inserted gene sequence (known as the transgene) may come from another unrelated plant, or from a completely different species: transgenic Bt corn, for example, which produces its own insecticide, contains a gene from a bacterium. Plants containing transgenes are often called genetically modified or GM crops, although in reality all crops have been genetically modified from their original wild state by domestication, selection and controlled breeding over long periods of time. On this web site we will use the term transgenic to describe a crop plant which has transgenes inserted. Image:Results of insect infestation on Bt (right) and non-Bt (left) cotton bolls. Source: USDA | Why Make Transgenic Crop Plants? A plant breeder tries to assemble a combination of genes in a crop plant which will make it as useful and productive as possible. Depending on where and for what purpose the plant is grown, desirable genes may provide features such as higher yield or improved quality, pest or disease resistance, or tolerance to heat, cold and drought. Combining the best genes in one plant is a long and difficult process, especially as traditional plant breeding has been limited to artificially crossing plants within the same species or with closely related species to bring different genes together. For example, a gene for protein in soybean could not be transferred to a completely different crop...
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...able to give them a better idea of what was wrong with a patient. There were many inventions that helped in making everyday tasks that they were performing daily much easier thus opening the door for more advancement in farming and in the medical field. Farming There were many inventions that impacted the work load of farming, one of which was the steel plow. The steel plow was invented by a blacksmith named John Deere. Farmers were not able to use the old style plow which was made of cast iron and was used more commonly in the eastern states. John Deere decided to make steel plows because the cast iron plows would easily break due to the soil being rich and thick in the Great Plains. Farmers were now spending more time harvesting land instead of fixing the cast iron plows. The steel plow had a wooden handle and was attached to a horse. The plow would dig the soil and turn it over in preparation for planting crops (Burns, 2012). Farming consists of extremely difficult and tedious labor. One example of this involves picking cotton seeds out of cotton. Laborers would spend a whole day picking seeds out of cotton plant and only produce around one pound of cotton per day. That all changed in 1793, when Eli Whitney built the first cotton gin machine. The machine was made up of rows of close set...
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...Did you ever know how it was like for enslaved African American? If you haven't then I'm going to tell you how difficult it was for enslaved African Americans. Throughout this multi-essay enslaved African American were treated horrible. That didn't stop the whites bringing them back being a slave. First, The cotton gin was created by Eli Whitney and many farms had that machine. What it did was take out seeds from cotton. To infer the value of enslaved people increased because of the role of cotton production. The upper south became a center for the slave of enslaved people. The whites believed that an economy based on cotton and slavery would continue to proper. Southern population consisted of enslaved people with no money to buy merchandise....
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...limitations. His coloring of the work experience must not cross the line from reality, but must present the factual workings of the day in such a way he avoids creating a fictitious environment to which the common workers cannot relate. The line that separates the two in thin and the essayist must use every weapon in his arsenal to create fact-based literature that entertains an intrigue the reader into feeling as though he has experienced the day for himself. This means by which this mix of truth and art is achieved in the successful presentation of the essay includes a variety of literary techniques. Maya Angelou, in her essay Cotton-Picking Time, painted four pictures for her readers in the short space of two and a half pages. First, she chose her vocabulary carefully in painting the picture of the cotton fields as the plant grew and the cotton bloomed. Her imagery of the plants turning “caterpillar green, then frosty white” touched the imagination of anyone who has witnessed the spring time in farm country. Whether it was watching the...
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..."National Manufactory" went out of business in 1796.Samuel Slater of Rhode Island visited several mills owned by Arkwright and associates, memorized the essential features and returned to the US. In 1792, he opened a yarn spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the first successful automated yarn spinning in the US. In 1814, James Cabot Lowell of Boston built a factory in Waltham, up the Charles River from Boston. Later, the Boston Associates built an entire mill town on the Merrimack River, and later named it "Lowell" in memory of James Cabot Lowell 1793 - Eli Whitney and Hogden Holmes developed a simplified method of removing the cotton lint from the seed. Whitney’s, and especially Holmes' saw tooth gin, revolutionized the cotton industry by dramatically increasing the productivity of cotton ginning. Gins In the early 1800s, cotton was raised in the southern United States and exported to mills in England and the north. Leaders such as William Gregg of South Carolina advocated a home-based textile industry for the south but the time was not right. Northern mills resisted to growth of mills outside New England....
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...were fed their machines were still producing food in the field. The families would then sell their surplus to help pay for and create new machines to make even more food and feed more families. Some key inventions of the revolution were the assembly line, interchangeable parts and the cotton gin. The assembly line helped speed up production allowing for more products to be distributed such as the model T ford in 1908. This allowed for an easier production for the companies producing and for the workers. It also allowed more men to work in these factories creating jobs for millions of Americans. Interchangeable parts were another huge invention of its time. Now instead of throwing out the whole machine because the gear was broken you could now easily replace it. This made repairs and upgrades for machines cheap, easy and fast. The third major invention was Eli Whitney's cotton gin. This hand crank style machine made separating cotton from its seeds easy. Cotton Farmers didn't have to rely on slaves to separate cotton which would take countless hours and produced very little clean cotton. The cotton gin required less labor and less time to help in the production of cotton. A slave worker could produce. The early cotton gin could produce the same amount of seed free cotton in an hour than 1 slave worker could in 600 hours. This led to more textiles and fabrics being produced as well as more slaves working in the field leading to larger plantations in the south west. So you...
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