A Slave Family Picking Cotton Picking cotton — thousands of small bolls attached to 3-foot-high woody and often prickly stalks — was a tedious and time-consuming task, taking up to four months on many plantations. However, workers of both sexes and all ages could pick cotton, and masters could measure output by weighing the baskets of each picker or family, chastising those who failed to meet their quotas. What does this early photograph of a family of pickers, taken on a plantation near Savannah, Georgia, suggest about women’s and children’s lives, family relations, and living conditions? © Collection of the New-York Historical Society.