This week in class I learned a lot about slavery.  I learned that slaves were forced to pick cotton much faster once the other parts of cotton processing became mechanized.  I had never thought about how the ability to spin cotton faster created a need to weave cotton faster which created a need to clean cotton faster which created another need to pick the cotton faster.  Machines were invented to speed up all of these processes except the picking because it was already being done basically for free.  This meant instead of inventing a machine to pick the cotton slaves were just forced to work faster.  Slave productivity was increased through very harsh methods of enforcement.  People across America eventually found out about the level of brutality used on the slaves and this created a movement to end slavery, eventually contributing to the start of the Civil War.
                                                                                                                               Wyatt