The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

Picking cotton is tiring work. Bent over all day, dragging a sack from row to row, pulling the boils off the plant, and carrying in the full sacks to be weighed tries even the sturdiest back muscles.

Basically, it's clean work, even though white fluff clings to your clothes, gets stuck in your whiskers, and stuffs your nose.

Watch out you don't get cheated. You're paid by the pound, and the scales may be rigged. But you can always throw a few rocks into your sack to make it heavier.

Fields are stripped of cotton in a hurry when hundreds of pickers, desperate for a few dollars, sweep across them. The money is good, but the work doesn't last long.

According to this interchapter, that's the whole cotton-picking story.  

NEXT
BACK

© Copyright 1984 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc.
Electronically Enhanced Text © Copyright 1993, World Library, Inc. Electronically Enhanced Text © Copyright 1993, World Library, Inc.
Further distribution without the written consent of PinkMonkey.com is prohibited.