THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

cotton, which was subsequently manufactured and sold. 84 Procuring free-labor cotton
from the slave-labor South was problematic, as the Nixons reported to the AFPA. The
couple had trouble convincing local farmers to adopt free-labor practices and often had to
price their cotton above market value. Producing free-labor cotton was also dangerous.
“[A]ll it needs is a match to create an explosion,” Esther Nixon noted. 85 The minutes of
the 1840 meeting also noted that the association had been offered six or seven hundred
pounds of cotton, at least one-third of that amount being the product of slave-labor. The
committee refused to purchase the cotton. 86 In an attempt to assure consumers of the true
character of their free-labor cotton, the AFPA attached printed labels to bolts of cotton
manufactured by the association. 87 (See Fig. 5)
84 Minutes, October 20, 1840, AFPA HSP.
85 Esther Nixon to the American Free Produce Association, February 7, 1840, March 6, 1840, May
1, 1840; Phineas Nixon to the American Free Produce Association, September 25, 1840, October 2, 1840,
Incoming Correspondence, American Free Produce Association, AFPA, HSP.
86 Minutes, October 20, 1840, American Free Produce Association, AFPA HSP.
87 Deborah Rossi traces the provenance of this particular label. Her research suggests this may be
the only extant label used by the AFPA to mark its manufactured goods. Deborah Rossi, “The Stuff of
History: American Free Produce Association Label, 1839-1847,” Connecticut History 47 (2009), 252-255.
The minutes of the AFPA contain no mention of the adoption of this label. Most likely it was used in the
early 1840s. By 1847, the AFPA had suspended its manufacturing committee.
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