Even when an initial boom in cotton prices fizzled as the South competed with India, Egypt, and Brazil, small farmers, sharecroppers, and tenants produced more cotton because cotton proved economically sticky. Once a farmer took it up, he had difficulty shaking it loose. Southern lands seemed to beg for cotton. The acidic soils of the South did not welcome wheat or even corn, which grew more abundantly elsewhere, but the South gave cotton all it required: 200 frost-free days annually, a temperature that rose above 77 degrees Fahrenheit for at least ninety days, and abundant rainfall well in
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