The owner men went on leading to their point: You know the land’s getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it.
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5. Cotton is personified here, when the landowners reprimand the farmers for over-reliance of cotton as a crop. They compare it to a thief stealing and bleeding the life force out of the land.