cotton-picking 的詞源

“棉花摘取者”一詞最早出現在《兔八哥》卡通中，但類似的名詞 cotton-picker “卑鄙的人”可以追溯到1919年左右，也許帶有種族主義色彩，但這些色彩隨着時間的推移已經消失。在機械化之前，摘棉花是種植園上最艱苦的勞動。

I drove out to a number of the farms near Denison and found many very young white children working all day in the hot sun picking and dragging sacks of cotton. In one field the labor corps consisted of one woman and six children, one of them 5 years, one 6 years, one 7 years, one 9 years, and two about 11. The father was plowing. The 5 and 6 year olds worked all day as did the rest. The 7-year-old said he picked 50 pounds a day and the 9 year old 75 pounds. (A good picker averages several hundred a day.) School begins late on account of the cotton picking, but the children nearly all prefer school to the picking. Picking hours are long, hot, and deadly monotonous. While the very young children seem to enjoy it, very soon their distaste for it grows into all-absorbing hatred for all work. ["Field Notes of Lewis W. Hine, Child-Labor Conditions in Texas," report to U.S. Congressional Commission on Industrial Relations, 1916]

我開車去了丹尼森附近的一些農場，發現許多非常年輕的白人孩子整天在烈日下工作，摘取並拖着棉花袋。在一個田地裏，勞動力隊伍由一名婦女和六個孩子組成，其中一個5歲，一個6歲，一個7歲，一個9歲，還有兩個大約11歲。父親正在耕地。5歲和6歲的孩子整天工作，其他人也是。7歲的孩子說他一天摘了50磅，9歲的孩子摘了75磅。（一個好的摘棉工人平均每天可以摘幾百磅。）學校因爲摘棉花而晚開學，但幾乎所有的孩子都更喜歡上學而不是摘棉花。摘棉花的時間很長，天氣炎熱，極其單調乏味。雖然非常年幼的孩子似乎喜歡這個工作，但很快他們對這個工作的厭惡就會變成對所有工作的全面憎恨。[“劉易斯·W·海恩的田野筆記，關於德克薩斯州童工條件的報告”，提交給1916年美國工業關係委員會]