Presents an overview of the history of the cotton industry in the United States, from colonial times to the mid-twentieth century.

A shoeful of cotton seeds -- Up before daybreak: cotton and slavery -- Mountains of cotton -- At the clang of a bell: the mill girls of Lowell -- From can to can't: sharecroppers and tenant farmers -- They called us lintheads: mill villages of the South -- Cotton pickers: the forces of change -- Mill workers: the last generation -- A hundred pounds of cotton: children then and now.