cotton-picking（adj.）
“棉花摘取者”一词最早出现在《兔八哥》卡通中，但类似的名词 cotton-picker “卑鄙的人”可以追溯到1919年左右，也许带有种族主义色彩，但这些色彩随着时间的推移已经消失。在机械化之前，摘棉花是种植园上最艰苦的劳动。
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]
我开车去了丹尼森附近的一些农场，发现许多非常年轻的白人孩子整天在烈日下工作，摘取并拖着棉花袋。在一个田地里，劳动力队伍由一名妇女和六个孩子组成，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。父亲正在耕地。5岁和6岁的孩子整天工作，其他人也是。7岁的孩子说他一天摘了50磅，9岁的孩子摘了75磅。（一个好的摘棉工人平均每天可以摘几百磅。）学校因为摘棉花而晚开学，但几乎所有的孩子都更喜欢上学而不是摘棉花。摘棉花的时间很长，天气炎热，极其单调乏味。虽然非常年幼的孩子似乎喜欢这个工作，但很快他们对这个工作的厌恶就会变成对所有工作的全面憎恨。[“刘易斯·W·海恩的田野笔记，关于德克萨斯州童工条件的报告”，提交给1916年美国工业关系委员会]
该词起源时间：1919年