It’s hard to fault prosperity from any perspective, whether from the cotton economy or the general fertility of certain states. But there isn’t much of a cotton economy here anymore, and while agriculture is still important, industry has far surpassed it. Perhaps some old songs need to be rewritten to reference places where there still is a cotton economy. “Way down upon the Ganges”? What river runs through Peru?
I live in the Florida Panhandle.
Probably more peanuts than cotton but still see quite a bit. When I was a kid, I picked it for 3 cents a pound. My Uncle would pay us when he sold it at the gin.
Now they do it by machine. I see these huge bricks of cotton covered with tarps. I will say one thing for us tho. The machine leaves a whole lot more in the field than we did.