First Half of The Travels of a T-Shirt

 Chapters 1 and 2 discusses the effects of the cotton industry and how it dominated for two hundred years. Cotton is one of the main ingredients to clothing. There was the history with slavery and the cotton farms. Cheap cotton created high demand and Great Britain wanted a part of the deal. The Industrial Revolution made production more efficient and faster with the use of technology and conveyor belts. By the time the Civil War broke out in the 1860s, cotton production reached an all time high. Competition was common with China and India. Those countries made benefits with increasing their productivity and improving the quality. The states of Oklahoma and Texas have possessions of cotton production and that hundreds of thousands of acres were owned. Plantation has changed over time with technology advancing and GM is taking part with fertilizers and pesticides. When it comes to everyday products, such as snacks, there's harmful oil from seeds that are harvested. Consumers don't pay attention to the ingredient labels and only  care about the taste. Part II of the book talks about China's labor force and the dangerous conditions. This was mentioned before in a previous blog. Cotton was introduced to China from the United States. There cotton mills that were in operation with twelve hours a day from the workers. Sweatshops are common throughout the country and they operate with the same unhealthy conditions. I recently got a hat that's intended for the American sports industry and it's made with 100% cotton and came from China so it fits right in.