Eli Whitney's Inventions

Imagine being in the heat from sun up to sun down picking out painful, sharp seeds from cotton. The invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin made the cotton business very profitable which increased the amount of slavery in the South. This invention made slavery work less difficult even though the hot rays of the sun were beaming on them. Even though the slaves had worked long, and hard hours they still survived through the day.

Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 The gin could produce more than 50 pounds of lint per day. Cotton production in the South rose 380% in the 20 years from the introduction of the cotton gin. Cotton was the dominant crop in the South. Cotton helped the textile mills of the North to flourish. It also made cleaning faster and easier. Dur

The Population in the South grew from 700,000 before Whitney’s patent to more than three million in 1850. Demand fueled by other inventions of the Industrial Revolution. In the 1850s seven-eighths of all immigrants settled in the North where 72% of the nation’s manufacturing capacity. Cotton fabric, formerly quite expensive due to the high cost of production, became dramatically cheaper, and cotton clothing became commonplace. Eli spent years unsuccessfully chasing after the profit

that he believed was his due. Within ten years after the cotton gin was put into use, the value of the total United States crop leaped from $150,000 to more than $8 million.
The cotton gin made slave working somewhat less difficult, but they still had to work in the hot sun from sun up to sun down. The cotton fiber that took a slave almost two months to produce could now be obtained by two slaves in one day. The number of slaves in the U.S rose dramatically. From 700,000 in 1790 to 3,200,000 in 1850 slave labor more economical. Factories employed African American women and children to work throughout the day. Before the cotton gin was made the slaves came home to their families with cut up, bloody hands from where they had to pick the cotton.
Eli says that he has never saw anyone clean as much as one pound a day by hand.

Most people liked Elis invention of the cotton gin simply because he did this to help out the slaves. Expansion in Georgia grew as production moved toward the south, and virgin lands saw the plow for the first time. This put a little money in the slaves pockets and it helped them out tremendously. “Whitney and his partner, Phineas Miller, kept the cotton gin under their immediate control by selling ginning services, not machines” (Britton). When the expansion of the South grew during the depression there was a shortage on food, and clothing. Women slaves increasingly produced clothing during the war because it was a necessity (O’Donovan

102).