In this paper you will be reading about how and why the cotton gin was started during the Industrial Revolution. The cotton gin is a machine that separates cotton fabric from its seeds. People used a cotton gin so they wouldn’t have to separate the cotton and seeds by hand. Otherwise, this would be a time consuming job. People can thank Eli Whitney for inventing this product about 223 years ago in 1794. The main purpose for the cotton gin was to speed up the process of separating the cotton from seeds. Cotton is one of america's leading export. You may be asking yourself how in the world this work? It’s pretty simple. There are wire teeth inside the cotton gin which separates the seeds from the cotton fabric. You put a cotton boll inside the …show more content…
Slave labor was much needed in most of american south for agricultural needs. Before the cotton gin was created, rice and tobacco were the main crops in the region. Historians argued that if the cotton gin had not been made to make large profit off of the cotton, the industry would have fallen along with the need of slave laborers. Cotton was the most profitable crop which made it the first choice of agricultural lands to move westward with the americas. Expanding the cotton gin westward put a heavy burden on African slave laborers who were subjugated in the expanding agricultural regions to make, and operate cotton gins. There was a booming in agricultural success the cotton gin in the south. After sugar and tobacco, cotton became the world's first luxury commodities. This commodity turned black people in the United States themselves into commodities. There were also many negative and positive impacts of the cotton gin. One of the negative impacts was that since the cotton production went up, farmers wanted more land so they took land from the native americans that lived there. Another negative impact was that most of the south produced cotton and barely any transportation and no factories. Although there were many negative impacts of the cotton gin, there were also many positive impacts. One of the positive impacts was that clothing became cheaper since a lot of cotton was being grown. Another positive impact was that the production brought trade with other
When Japan and India began to mechanize their cotton industries between the 1880s and 1930s, several similarities and differences surfaced. Both Japan and India’s cotton yarn productions began to increase rapidly, workers in both countries faced similar poor working conditions, and the transaction of workers going from rural to urban areas were protruding. However, both countries contained a difference in the type of workers in the cotton industry workforce as well as the displacement of skilled Indian workers as opposed to Japanese workers. (Thesis) In the mechanization of the cotton industry, Japan and India similarly shared their ways of production in which they both had rapid growth with machine-made cotton between the 1880s and the 1930s
Lawkete starts her book in the first century, before recorded history. “The first gin was made from a single roller and a hard, flat surface.” “They were used to remove cotton fiber from the seed.” After some period of time, the cotton gin had finally reached America in 1607. Western Europeans accidentally found their way to America while trying to bypass trade in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean.
The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, and it greatly increased the efficiency of separating cotton fibers from their seeds. Before the cotton gin, the process of separating cotton fibers from the seeds was a time-consuming and labor-intensive task that could take hours to complete. With the cotton gin, this process could be done much more quickly and efficiently, leading to a significant increase in cotton production. This led to a huge increase in the demand for cotton, which in turn fueled the growth of the textile
Even though the cotton gin didn’t make a lot of money for Whitney, it boosted the money for other people. Even though it didn’t help him at all, he had still become very known for his invention. Before the cotton gin, the Southern slave owners made their slaves pick cotton with their bare hands making it really difficult for the slaves. Whitney later made the cotton gin. Slave owners had heard about it and they immediately
You put cotton in the top and then crank the lever. The cotton gets pulled through wire teeth, which acted like a comb, and pushed the seeds out of the cotton. Then, the cotton gets pulled out of those wire teeth by brushes on the other side of the teeth, and then pulled off of the brushes by hand. This cotton gin allowed farmers to plant larger amounts of cotton. Before the cotton gin, cotton was not a cash crop but was used for clothing and other things like blankets or pillows.
In 1793 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, it was a very important part in producing a record level of cotton. With all this cotton plantations started to expand and there was a lot of cotton that traveled from the
The American Industrial Revolution was prompted mostly by the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812. Stephen Yafa was the author of “Camelot on the Merrimack.” The word “Camelot” is unusual because of the situations of the mill girls’ working hours, low pay, and working conditions. “Camelot” is usually thought of a prefect, beautiful time, place, and situation, like a fairy tale.
After seeing the struggle of removing the seeds, Eli decided that a machine was crucial to increase the production rate and the amount of exports. With the creation of the gin, the bar quickly rose from 1 pound of cotton to 50 pounds of cotton that could be cleaned per day. This allowed more slaves to work in the fields, rather than cleaning cotton, which resulted in the cost of cotton to decrease dramatically. Both the Northern states and Britain benefited from the growth of cotton because they could buy cotton at a cheaper price, expanding trade between them and the South. Before long, “cotton was the [official] “king” in South Carolina” and throughout the whole South (South Carolina Journey 119).
Southerners worked on their own little farms, but plantation owners used slaves to help grow cash crops. Such as tobacco, rice, sugarcane, and indigo. During the early 1790s the use of slaves had started to reduce, Europeans were unhappy with the high prices of tobacco and rice. Farmers in the South wanted to expand the amount of land and slaves, so they started looking for fresh fertile soil. In 1850 cotton plantations had stretched from the Atlantic coast to Texas.
If the cotton gin had been invented at an earlier time the slavery wouldn’t happen because they wouldn’t need anyone to do the work, they needed to be done. People or more like slaves were being exploited due to the work they were doing. If the machines, they needed would have been invented at this time there would have not been a problem in looking for people to do any work and overworking them. There’s always different opinions whether positive or negative. The negative opinions were affecting certain people, such as the ones that were put under pressure by doing all the work.
Yet, there was an undeniable impact of slavery on the economy of the South. In the 1840’s and 1850’s the South had become mostly a cash crop agricultural economy. Without slaves, people were only able to keep small farms that barely made enough money. Crops like cotton were produced in the South and were in high demand. The increase in demand for these products
Southern plantations farms mainly made tobacco crops in Virginia, these farms used Africans as the main source of labor in the 1600s. The North thought that using slaves for the plantation owners benefits was not right and they believed Africans had a right to be free citizens. This difference in opinion caused a big issue between the North and the South, this mainly effected the South because Southern farmers relied on cotton plantations and slavery to make money. Cotton began to pick up in popularity in the US because it was so common, but it was not that easy to collect.
Alexander Hamilton i. Alexander Hamilton was born in 1755 and became one of the leading founding fathers of the United States. He was a strong opinioned federalist. ii. Alexander also became the first Secretary of the Treasury. While being the secretary of the Treasury he wanted to assume states debts into a federal system of tax in order to help get the newly independent country out of debt.
It revolutionized the cotton industry by making it more profitable. A machine was now used to remove seeds from cotton rather than having to remove them by hand. This allowed more cotton to be processed quicker which made production of cotton more efficient for farmers. Prior to the invention of the cotton gin, slavery was actually dying out in the southern United States due to how labor intensive the removal of seeds from cotton had become.
Before its invention it took hours to get the seeds out of just a few pounds of cotton. However, in 1794 Eli Whitney created the hand cranked gin which could clean the seeds out of 50 pounds of cotton each day. This newfound technology allowed plantation owners to sell more cotton faster. Because of this huge plantations began popping up all throughout the South and each plantation needed more slaves to harvest the cotton. In the period after the gin’s invention until Congress abolished the importing of slaves it is estimated that Southern states brought in around 100,000 slaves from Africa.