Reflection on what we have learned

We have earned that slaves were a very large part of the cotton industry. Slaves were bought and forced to work long hours in the heat picking cotton with very little food. Booker T. Washington a former slave explained the amount of food that they were given saying that if he didn't get enough breakfast he would have to go get the leftovers from the cows and the pigs. Slaves were also fed things like opossums, raccoons and snapping turtles. Up until the invention of machines to help with picking cotton slaves had to pick all the cotton by hand which was a very slow and painful task. On average one slave could pick one pound of cotton per day but the spinning jenny doubled productivity. Things like special whips were invented to make make slaves work faster and increase the speed at which the slaves picked cottons.