Orphans vs. Cotton Comparison

This is a dark, morbid joke that uses wordplay. It sets up a comparison between orphans and cotton, where the punchline is that cotton gets 'picked.' The word 'picked' has a dual meaning: it refers to the harvesting of cotton, but also refers to the selection or 'picking on' of a person. This makes the joke dark because it is suggesting that orphans are not even picked on, meaning that even the lowest or worse things are not happening to them.