Cotton gin

Many of America's founders assumed slavery would gradually die out on its own.

Then came Eli Whitney's cotton gin.

While cotton grew abundantly in the South, removing its sticky seeds by hand was painstakingly slow.

A single enslaved worker could clean only one pound of cotton per day.

Powers with more.

Dr. Abeer Saha is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, specializes in engineering and agriculture.

Let's go ahead and, and I know we're talking about Eli Whitney and the patent for the cotton gin.

Can you sort of set the scene as to where we were in the timeline of the country when this was actually invented?

His great-grandpappy Cotton.

And his uncle, the Cotton Gin from Kentucky.

But, like, this fucking asshole is supposed to be, like, a stalwart fucking, you know, Senate Republican.

Oh, you can count on...

CHAPTER VI.

ELI WHITNEY AND THE INVENTION OF THE COTTON GIN With the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Crompton, any amount of cheap cotton yarn could be spun soon too the power loom was invented which lowered the cost of weaving the age of cheap clothing seemed at hand when the poor as well as the rich could afford clothes enough to be well dressed clean and warm one difficulty stood in the way-the lack of cheap cotton the chief sources of cotton at that time were asia and the west indies very little cotton was raised in the united states because of the great cost of separating the seeds from the fiber or lint ten to fifteen days work would produce on one acre from five to eight hundred pounds of green seed cotton but it was a long and tedious day's work to pick the seeds out of four pounds of seed cotton so as to prepare a single pound for the market the seeds were picked out by hand this was usually done in the evening after the regular work of the day then the slaves father mother and children would sit in a circle about a torch and pick an american eli whitney invented a machine to do this work by reason of his invention the united states is to-day the greatest cotton producing country in the world the cotton crop of nineteen sixteen amounted to more than sixteen million bales and was worth several hundred million dollars whitney's cotton gin easily ranks in importance with the ginny of hargreaves the water frame of arkwright and the mule of crompton these four inventions are the foundation of the cotton industry of today to spin and weave cotton hamlets have grown into cities such as manchester in england and lowell in massachusetts great territories such as our southern states have been given over to the cultivation of cotton steamship and railroad lines have been built to carry cotton from the fields to the mills and millions of people earn their daily bread from raising or spinning or weaving cotton or from selling the finished goods to have had a part in the growth of such a great industry is no slight honor boyish traits of whitney eli whitney was born at westborough massachusetts in seventeen sixty five his parents lived on a farm and belonged to that sturdy class who provide well for their children and train them to be industrious saving honest and honorable virtues which boys and girls must have if they are to lead clean lives be useful and be truly successful as a mere boy eli had a passion for pulling things to pieces to see how they were made and how they worked his sister tells the story his father's watch was the greatest piece of mechanism eli had as yet seen he was very anxious to look inside of it and to examine the works but was not permitted to do so one sunday morning observing that his father was going to meeting and was leaving at home the wonderful little machine he made believe that he was sick as an apology for not going to church as soon as the family were out of sight he flew to the room where the watch hung and taking it down he was so delighted with the movements of the wheels that he took it to pieces before he thought what he was doing his father was a stern parent and he would have been punished for his idle curiosity had the mischief been found out he put the works all so neatly together however that his father never discovered what he had done until eli told him many years afterwards eli was equally fond of making things our father writes the sister had a workshop and a variety of tools also a lathe this gave my brother an opportunity to learn the use of tools when very young he was always making something in the shop and seemed not to like working on the farm on a time after the death of our mother when our father had been absent from home two or three days on his return he inquired of the housekeeper what the boys had been doing she told him what b and j had been about but what has eli been doing said he she replied he has been making fiddles ah i fear eli will have to take his portion in fiddles eli was not more than fifteen or sixteen years of age when he began to put his gift for making things to practical use it was the time of the revolutionary war nails made then by hand were scarce and brought a good price eli proposed to his father that he give him the needed tools to make nails this the father did and it was not long before eli was supplying all the neighbors for miles around besides he put new blades and broken knives and did different kinds of curious jobs in a way which exceeded the skill of the country smiths when the war closed it was no longer profitable to make nails but fashion came to young whitney's rescue the ladies of the time used long pins to fasten on their bonnets whitney made these pins with such skill and finish that he had a monopoly of the trade he also built up a good business in walking canes when about nineteen whitney began to wish for a better education than could be obtained in the district school by working in his shop and by teaching school for two winters he saved enough money to make a start he entered yale university in the fall of seventeen eighty nine when a boy like whitney enters college now he is almost certain to take a course in mechanical engineering But when Whitney went to Yale, there was no such course.

There was only one course, the classical, made up for the most part of Greek, Latin, and mathematics, with a little science.

Though Whitney had no opportunity at Yale to prepare himself to become an engineer, he never lost his interest in making things.

Green saw that Whitney was a young man of character, and the two became well acquainted before they reached Georgia.

When Whitney arrived at Savannah, he found that his employer, instead of being willing to pay $100 a year and board for the teaching of his children, as he had promised to do, was now unwilling to pay more than $50 a year.

whitney refused to take the position this left him in a strange city without friends and almost without money mrs green on hearing of his troubles invited him to her plantation some twelve miles from savannah whitney was not long in winning the hearts of mrs green's children his skillful fingers made for them many wonderful toys and he repaired others that were broken nor did mrs green's respect for whitney grow less as she came to know him better she soon learned also that she was entertaining an inventor of the first rank one evening while making a piece of embroidery on a frame called a tambour she complained that the frame tore the delicate silk threads of her work an evening or two later whitney presented her with a frame to do the same work but made in a different way the new frame was much better than the old one and mrs green wanted to know where he had obtained it to her surprise he replied oh i just got it out of my head early in january seventeen ninety three three former comrades of general green's visited mrs green being planters they talked of farming and about what could and what could not be raised at a profit they all agreed that much of their upland would raise good cotton but that there was no profit in growing cotton because it cost so much to separate the seeds from the lint they deplored greatly the lack of a machine to do away with this tedious and costly work whereupon mrs green said gentlemen why don't you apply to my young friend mr whitney he can make anything whitney was called in but when he learned what the planters wanted he assured them that he did not know how to make such a machine still to have the need pointed out to him and to be asked to make a machine aroused all of the inventive genius there was in him inventing the cotton gin the very next day saw him on his way to savannah to get some cotton in the seed Returning, he told Mr. Miller, who was at the time manager of Mrs. Green's plantation and afterwards her husband, what he intended to do.

Mrs.