cotton-picking 的词源

这个词最早在一部《巴ugs·巴尼》卡通片中被用作贬义词，但类似的名词cotton-picker，意指“可鄙的人”，大约在1919年就出现了，可能带有种族歧视的色彩，不过这些含义随着时间的推移已经淡化。在机械化之前，采摘棉花是种植园中最艰苦的劳动。

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]

我开车去了德尼森附近的几个农场，发现许多非常年轻的白人孩子在烈日下整天忙着采摘和拖拉棉花袋。在一个田地里，劳动力队伍只有一名女性和六个孩子，其中一个5岁，一个6岁，一个7岁，一个9岁，还有两个大约11岁。父亲在犁地。5岁和6岁的孩子整天都在工作，其他孩子也是如此。7岁的孩子说他每天能采摘50磅，9岁的孩子则说能采摘75磅。（一个优秀的采摘工人平均每天能采摘几百磅。）由于采摘棉花，学校开学时间推迟，但几乎所有孩子都更喜欢上学而不是采摘。采摘的时间长、炎热，而且单调乏味。虽然年幼的孩子们似乎很享受，但很快他们对这份工作的厌恶会发展成对所有工作的强烈厌恶。[《路易斯·韦恩·海因的田野笔记：德克萨斯州的童工状况》，向美国国会工业关系委员会的报告，1916年]