From 1850 to 1950, almost 2,000 harvesting patents were issued. Prior to the 1960s, the Cotton Belt was witness to human picker armies in the rows. ( Sphagtalis Vulgaris was a total fabrication, but the Latin nomenclature added an air of validity to the farce.) In a lightbulb moment, he imported up to 50 monkeys of the Sphagtalis Vulgaris species and trained the simians to pick cotton during fall harvest. In a nutshell, the story as reported: In 1896, Mangum observed the intelligence of roughly a dozen monkeys performing at a fair in Vicksburg. However, in 1898-1899, hundreds of newspapers and periodicals, including the Los Angeles Times, Cotton Planter’s Journal, and The School New and Practical Educator, reported on a primate-based innovation capable of transforming farming’s perpetual labor woes.

Mangum, a legitimate Delta cotton grower in Smedes, Miss., and owner of a Sharkey County plantation located between Rolling Fork and Vicksburg, was a friend of Theodore Roosevelt and later played a genuine part in the president’s 1902 bear hunt that birthed the iconic narrative of the “teddy bear.” In 1898-1899, during an era of booming cotton, the harebrained tale of “Mister Mangum’s monkeys” went viral in the pre-digital age and was promoted coast-to-coast by the press.

Coast to coast monkey business game