Mr. Holt, whose first job was picking cotton at age 8, says he enjoys his work.

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Chiles grew up on a plantation picking cotton for a white landowner, and going to segregated schools with her three sisters in the town of Itta Bena.

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On a recent December morning there were teens picking cotton in nearly all of a half-dozen Monsanto farms in Uyyalawada, 250 miles south of India's high-tech hub Hyderabad.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The pollination work lasts for 70 to 100 days and is followed by cotton-picking staggered over several months.

FORBES: Child Labor

All that began to crumble on October 2nd 1944, the day of the first public demonstration of mechanical cotton-picking in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

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However, with the demand for clothing picking up alongside the shortage of cotton, the cost of the raw material has soared.

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