Profile of America's Cotton Belt & Cotton Industry 87764 (1961)

Synopsis

This 1961 black and white film “The Cotton Belt - Yesterday and Today” was produced by the Indiana University Audio Visual Center. A woman stands at an ironing board and irons cotton clothing (:34). Fields of cotton are shown. A bole is spread apart up-close to show how it can stretched and then spun into threads and woven into cloth (:44- 1:10 ). Cotton seeds are dumped into a cattle trough ( 1:12 ). A ladle scoops Snow-kreem Vegetable Shortening into a pan on a stove ( 1:15 ). A map shows where cotton is grown around the world and specifically where in the U.S., known as the cotton belt. Illustrations of slave labor are shown ( 1:27 - 2:57 ). A weaving machine is shown in action ( 2:59 - 3:07 ). A worker stands picking cotton in chest-high plants ( 3:12 ). Shown are a sharecropper’s home and him walking behind the plow pulled by mules ( 4:18 ). A farmer pours fertilizer into a wheelbarrow ( 4:42 ). A boll weevil eats on a cotton boll ( 4:46 ). Abandoned farm buildings and show missing its laces lie in ruins ( 5:00 ). A tractor pulls a plow ( 5:12 ). An aerial view is shown of the Mississippi Valley farmland. A tractor plants six rows at a time. A cultivator lifts out weeds. A plane sprays a chemical dust on the growing plants to kill boll weevils and make the leaves die off. ( 6:08 - 6:55 ). A mechanical picker moves through the field. The full basket is dumped into a trailer and taken to a cotton gin for processing ( 6:56 - 7:42 ). A train moves past a plant making…

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Details

Running time

16 minutes

Collection

Ephemeral Films

Subjects on the Internet Archive

• Stock Footage