Chopping cotton on rented land near White Plains, Greene County, Ga

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Cotton chopping, the work of thinning and hoeing weeds from young cotton rows, was a central part of farm life across the Piedmont South for generations. This scene is set on rented land near White Plains in Greene County, Georgia, a place where many tenant families worked fields they did not own and often paid for their use with a share of the harvest or a cash rent. Field labor like this was long, hot, and repetitive, and it was usually done by hand with short-handled hoes, often by whole families. Pictures of this kind, made in the rural South during the early twentieth century, help show the daily routine behind the cotton economy that shaped the region.

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