Cotton Gin Research Paper

932 Words2 Pages

Elizabeth Rolfes

Per. ½

12/13/15

Cotton

“This machine may be turned by water or with a horse, with the greatest ease, and one man and a horse will do more than fifty men with the old machine. It makes labor fifty times less, without throwing any class of people out of business.” - Eli Whitney, 1793

In 1793, a new technology swept through The South, completely transforming the region and the culture of those who inhabited it. The cotton gin, a new machine that made growing cotton more productive, allowed for the plantation owner lifestyle to become an ideal for wealthy southern families. The efficiency of the cotton gin transformed the United States economy and caused slavery in America to continue long past its time.

The cotton gin
Before the cotton gin, the cotton industry was a dying one. Slaves worked on American plantations, but their numbers were decreasing as the cotton industry slowed. The cotton gin revamped the plantation industry entirely, growing cotton was now worthwhile. As cotton plantations expanded, The South demanded more slaves to keep up with the increase of cotton production. Before 1793, a laborer could only clean the seeds from one pound of cotton a day. With a cotton gin, the laborer could clean the seeds from 50 pounds of cotton in one day (“Cotton Gin”). Since a single slave could now clean cotton quickly, the demand for cotton pickers began to rise. The plantation owners turned to slavery as a way to fill their fields with free labor. In 1790, in the first federal census, 697,897 slaves living in the United States were counted. Only twenty years late, in 1810, 1.2 million slaves were recorded to be living in America (“Growth and Entrenchment of Slavery”). Slavery offered an efficient option for the farmers to keep their plantations running smoothly. Due to how cheap slavery was for the plantation owners, the demand for slaves skyrocketed, all farmers in The South wanted free labor for their
Due to its high volume of output in cotton production, the cotton gin was an essential tool in the American economy and allowed for cotton to be produced for an extremely cheap price. Eli Whitney had expected his invention to help the farmers of The South, but couldn’t have imagined the extremely negative impact that his invention would have on the millions of Americans enslaved. The cotton industry and slavery were both slowing before his invention. Had the cotton gin never been invented, slavery might have died out long before 1865, and millions of people would have avoided this miserable fate.

Bibliography

"Cotton Gin." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2015. 6 Dec. 2015.

"Cotton Gin and Eli Whitney." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 7 Dec. 2015.

Eli Whitney, Jr. to his Father, 11 September 1793. Eli Whitney Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

“Growth and Entrenchment of Slavery." Africans in America. PBS, 7 Dec. 2015.

"Short-Staple Cotton." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2015. 8 Dec.

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