Encyclopedia Image of the Cotton IndustryThis romanticized image of slavery in the West Indies cotton industry was published in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia. It shows enslaved men, at right, gathering and picking over cotton bolls, while the woman at left mills the bolls to remove their seeds. The Encyclopedia presented mixed views on slavery; one article described it as “indispensable” to economic development, while others argued passionately for the natural right to freedom of all mankind. (Courtesy, Dover Publications. From Denis Diderot, Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry, edited by Charles C. Gillispie (Dover Publications, 1959).)