ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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Touch the shirt you're wearing.

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Now touch your pants. [Man touches his shorts]

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And now touch the inside of your nose.

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If you did what we asked, you did two things that helped introduce today's topic, and one

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thing that helped prove to everyone around you that you pick your nose. Awkward. [Woman looks disgusted at man picking nose]

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Chances are, the clothing you touched is made of cotton. And believe it or not, cotton isn't

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somehow magically made at Target. [Woman outside Target store]

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Cotton is grown from the earth, and along with tobacco, rice and indigo, was one of

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the most important crops grown in the English colonies along the east coast of the United States.

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Cotton is a plant native to North America,

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as well as Africa and India, and it wasn't super popular until the invention of the cotton gin. [Locations of cotton popularity across a global map]

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Gin is short for engine, and it helped making cotton easier to harvest. Cotton was so important

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to the English colonies, in fact, that it was later called King Cotton, which a pretty [Cotton wearing a crown on a throne]

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darn cute name if you ask us. Rice is originally from China, but African

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slaves who already knew how to grow rice helped show Europeans in the New World the tricks [Slave carrying a bowl of rice]

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of the trade, which is a surprisingly nice thing to do given the fact that they were,

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y'know, enslaved by them.

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And why was rice important? Because it's delicious. Duh. [Sushi rolls]

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And indigo is more than just the most forgotten color of the rainbow… it's actually a plant,

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and its leaves can be used to create a dark-blue dye for coloring fabrics. [Indigo dye and a pair of jeans appear]

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Because apparently slave-owners needed to be fashionable.

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These crops and others were all a part of the plantation system.

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And what's a plantation, you ask? Well, it's basically just another word for a big farm. [Coop discussing plantation system]

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Sounds fun, right?

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The only difference is that it was run by slaves, which made it far more productive,

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and in turn made the land-owners very, very wealthy. [Land owners swimming in a pool of money]

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Not so fun anymore. Some of these plantation owners had hundreds

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of slaves, who were forced to live in simple wooden cabins and a dirt floor.

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Which might sounds like a nice weekend vacation with the family, but it's not exactly ideal

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to live in all the time. Especially without heating, glass windows, or even iPhones. [Family in a wooden cabin]

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We'll give you a moment for that last one to sink in. No. iPhones. Seriously, ask your

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parents. It was practically the stone age. Anyway, some slaves were treated very poorly, [Family driving in a car]

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and others were treated with some kindness – but nearly all of them were punished for

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not working hard enough…often with a whip.

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And if they tried to escape, they were often killed. [Soldiers shooting a slave]

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So the next time we're all moaning about our phones running out of batteries, maybe we'll

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stop and think about being exploited, abused, and mistreated…

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And remember that there actually is something worse than not having access to an iPhone. [Car drives by and iPhone falls out of the car]

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