Category: Agricultural Conspiracies

• The "Cotton" Monopoly Sabotage

  This theory claimed that the boll weevil was not simply an agricultural pest that spread naturally into the United States from Mexico, but a deliberately introduced or even laboratory-bred insect released to break Southern cotton production for the benefit of outside textile interests, often imagined as British mill lords. The theory arose because the boll weevil’s impact was economically devastating and because cotton already sat inside a highly international system of finance, shipping, and industrial manufacture. In rumor form, natural infestation became industrial sabotage.