Cotton Gin Essay

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Eli Whitney is known today for being one of America’s greatest inventors. Whitney was the inventor of the cotton gin and a pioneer in the mass production of cotton. Whitney had designed the cotton gin which is a machine that automated the separation of cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber. Eli Whitney's invention revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States. Many of Eli Whitney’s inventions had a great impact on American history, but the invention of the cotton gin had the greatest impact.
Back in the seventeen and eighteen hundredths, cotton was America’s greatest exports. “the southern states were producing two thirds of the world's cotton.”(Ciment 6) It was an ideal crop that could easily be grown. “His cotton gin enabled a laborer to separate a lot of cotton from the seeds with little effort. A laborer working by hand could once expect to produce only one pound of cleaned cotton per day. With the help of a cotton gin, fifty pounds could be cleaned in a day.” (Benson 399, 400) After the invention of the cotton gin, the profit of cotton has double every year. The affects of the cotton gin gave America the opportunity to grow three-quarters of the world’s supply of cotton. This led America to enter a “cotton boom” era. “By 1800, seven years after Whitney’s invention, cotton production in the United States had increased 2300 % and continued to increase rather steadily… until production controls were imposed during the 1930s.” (Smith 8)

Like many inventors, Eli Whitney could not have foreseen the ways his cotton gin changed society for the worst. The downside to the cotton gin was its effect on slavery in America. Although the cotton gin relieved people from labor, it had a downfall that caused the expansion...

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...ca was frustrated by, and the cotton gin also fueled slave disagreements. It eventually arose to a conflict over the control of slavery. In terms of knowing what the cotton gin means for Civil War history, the relation to the growth of slavery and its economic centrality is clear.
Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin had a strong impact on America. The effect it had on America was vast and remarkable. Cotton quickly became an important crop in the South. The United States grew to be such a strong and powerful global force as the crop grew. The downside effect of the cotton gin is its prolonging development of slavery in the United States. The crop always needed constant attention and it also needed many laborers. While the Northern part of the United States focused on independence, the “cotton boom” era cemented the South to slavery that other crops did not.

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