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essay on how the cotton gin changed america
essay on how the cotton gin changed america
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In the early 19th century, a substantial amount of inventions in the United States sparked a revolution in American society on a political, social, and economic level. For instance, during the late 18th century, the southeastern region of the United States was dominated by cotton, which was being mass produced and sold as a cash crop. In order to efficiently harvest said cotton, numerous Africans were imported to the United States for the practice of slavery. With the creation of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in the year 1793, many thought that it would diminish slavery from the United States for it allowed cotton to be harvested more quickly and efficiently than ever before, meaning that it called for less manpower. Though in reality, the effects of the cotton gin were quite the opposite …show more content…
The Industrial Revolution raised the standard of living among many people, most being a part of the middle to upper class. Those in the lower working class experienced little improvement for their situations as factory workers continued to receive low wages as well as having work taken away from them by machines. Due to the need to mass produce goods, production shifted from the traditional settings of homes to factories. This eventually led to a large scale construction of factories in large cities. With the creation of cities, also came the flow of population. In the mid-18th century there was a large population shift from the countryside to the cities as to find jobs. In the work place children labor became quite common, used to do highly dangerous tasks due to their small size such as fixing machines. The growth of child labor was also paralleled by the worsening of working conditions in factories around the country. Work environments were overcrowded and all around
Before the American civil war, the Southerner’s economy had almost entirely been constructed on slave and cash crop agriculture. The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney. The cotton gin was a contraption that transmogrified the fabrication of cotton by significantly making the task of removing seeds from the cotton fiber faster. The invention benefitted the slaves because it saved the slaves
America’s economies and regions were becoming more connected than ever, which also contributed to a resulting better economy. However, the dependence on agriculture and slavery in the South resulted in further sectionalism and isolating ties to England. Though the connection between the Midwest and the North was strong due to numerous railroads, canals, and paved roads, the South was not as included in the new Market Revolution that was taking place. In addition to this, the South barely traded with any of the other regions. In fact, the South exported most of its cotton to England, and imported foreign goods more than any other region. Only connected to England, the South cut off a substantial amount of ties with its American sister regions. Slavery also contributed to the economy of the South. The only region that relied on slaves, the South was the minority when it came to favoring the peculiar institution. The invention of Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin revived the need for slavery in the South which made the picking and production of cotton faster and more profitable that it was before. In the South, “Cotton was King,” and because of this, the
This invention changed the way the South functioned, and the ripple effect it created changed the course of history forever. The ripple effect caused by Eli Whitney’s cotton gin can be seen as the driving force behind many of the conflicts between North and South, and eventually culminating in the Civil War. Before Eli Whitney’s invention, slavery was dying in the South. The price of tobacco had plummeted, and planters were freeing slaves because of the high cost of feeding, housing and clothing them. When Eli Whitney introduced his invention the cotton market exploded. Cotton began to be grown in enormous quantities because it was good for making clothes, and with the invention of the cotton gin easier to produce. This explosion in the growth of the cotton market rejuvenated the slave trade. This time, though, the slave trade was not between the U.S. and Africa, but instead between the Old South, and the New South. The Old South began to “breed” slaves to sell to the cotton farmers in the New South. These farmers needed large numbers of slaves because once the cotton was ripe, it needed to be picked quickly. The price of slaves skyrocketed, and this new crop ensured the practice of slavery would continue. This continuati...
The reason why slavery spread into the cotton kingdom after revolution is because the tobacco income plummeted as white setters from Virginia and Carolinas forcing the original Native Americans inhabitants farther and farther west where they established plantations. The wide spread use of the cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, made these cotton plantations more efficient and profitable. Around 1820, slavery was concentrated in tobacco growing areas of Virginia, Kentucky along coastal region of South Carolina and Northern Georgia and in 1860s it spread deep in the South (Alabama, Texas, Louisiana) following the spread of cotton.
The Cotton Gin was an invention that allowed the mass production of cotton. Cotton was previously a very difficult crop to profit from, because of the long hours required to separate cotton seeds from the actual cotton fibers. This all changed when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, a machine that sped up the process, thereby making cotton farming a profitable industry for the Southern States. With large areas of prime land ready for crops the Southern states bought and transported slaves in record numbers in order to work on their cotton farms. Although there are no definitive statistics approximately 1,000,000 slaves were moved west from the 'old Southern states' to the new ones; i.e. Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas to Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. The new ease of cotton ginning coupled with the high demand for cotton in the textile industry gave rise to the need for a workforce to harvest the cotton. The farmers turned to a readily available labor force they didn't have to pay: slaves.
Eli Whitney’s cotton gin created a system that cleaned the cotton at a much more rapid rate than before. Due to the speed of the cotton, this led to more cotton being planted. Which would eventually lead to more slaves to pick them. Southerners wanted more slaves to keep up with the demands of the cotton gin.
Angela Lakwete. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
Although children had been servants and apprentices, child labor reached new extremes during the Industrial Revolution, as the demand for labor increased. The need for child labor grew in Britain and even in the United States in the late 1700s and early 1800s. During the Industrial Revolution, many families had to find someone to work for or they would not survive. Industrialists saw child labor as a favorable form of labor due to certain benefits, while the opponents of child labor saw it as a violation towards human treatment.
The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 gave slavery a new life in the United States. Between 1800 and 1860, slave-produced cotton expanded from South Carolina and Georgia to newly colonized lands west of the Mississippi. (Howard, 2013)
In fact, Whitney's gin harmed many more people than it helped, ripping more than 250,000 African-Americans away from their homes and into the US. Slavery spread into every facet of the South now that cotton was extremely easy to gain money from, and plantation owners immediately started moving west to gain more land to farm cotton on. As a result, this created a massive domino effect of events that eventually lead up to the horrific events of the Civil War. Mainly, the amount of slaves owned because of the cotton gin was almost 4X larger than it was from 1800, 893,602 slaves, to 1850, 3,204,313 slaves (CITATION). This was due to the fact that America was then producing ¾ of the world's cotton, and they needed a huge workforce to keep up with the huge demand. But now that the South had this amount of slaves, cotton became the US's leading export. They had an immense inflow of money since the US had amazing land for growing cotton and because there were buyers everywhere across the globe wanting cotton textiles and just pure cotton. The US got extremely rich from this invention, but it still does not excuse the terrible ways that they went about making
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 rise of cotton in the late 18th century was an important time for the economy. The production of cotton was concentrated primarily in the Southern part of the United States due to the climate and growing conditions. The agricultural South was completely dependent on the production of cotton. As the late 18th century cash crops such as rice, indigo, and tobacco became less beneficial. Eli Whitney, a graduate from Yale University, and looking to pay off college debt invented a machine that changed history. The cotton gin is known as the “cotton gin.” This machine led the way to an economic uproar. Plantation owners saw Whitney’s invention as a way to make money fast. Cotton became exceptionally profitable and was a major success in the Antebellum
The south, which was mostly agricultural, depended on the production of cotton. It was very important to their economy. Before Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin was used throughout the south, the United States produced about 750,000 bales of hay in 1830 (How the Cotton Gin). By 1850 it had increased to 2.85 billion bales of hay (How the Cotton Gin). Most of this was in the south because it had the weather conditions needed for cotton to grow. In 1793 Whitney saw the difficulty of taking out cotton seeds by hand (Cefrey 10-11). He decided to create a machine that could clean cotton faster than a human could. The Cotton Gin made the processing of cotton much faster and quicker. As a result of this, land owners were now able to have large cotton plantations across the south (How the Cotton Gin). Southerners were becoming wealthy very fast because of the cotton gin. Eli Whitney’s invention of the Cotton Gin made cotton the South’s main crop making more slave labor needed and political tensions rise.
In 1794, a man named Eli Whitney patented an invention called the Cotton Gin while employed by Catherine Greene, an independent mother and plantation owner. The machine increased cotton production exponentially by speeding up the process of pulling the cotton fibers away from the seeds. This invention was revolutionary in the fact that at the time, the southern economy had no textiles to refine the produce and little means of transportation and the south was actually moving away from the labour intensive production of cotton. However, with the help of the cotton gin; cotton soon became the leading export of the South's cotton-based agricultural economy.Though the cotton gin was a remarkably simple device it caused an explosion in textile production in the south and the textbook provides the data that “in the decade of the 1790s, cotton production increased from 3,000 bales a year to 73,000... all of which made slaves more indispensable than ever” (157).
Throughout history each major technological advancement has been able to significantly change the society in which it was introduced to, to demonstrate, the cotton gin was a valuable tool which allowed the process of picking cotton to be accelerated and allowed it to become a more fruitful activity. The invention of the cotton gin affected the American society greatly as it was able to advance cotton as a commodity which allowed the economy to flourish, but it also had other effects as it emphasized the germaneness of slavery. In the 21st century technology has evolved into a tool which has enormously guided the