Eli Whitney And The Cotton Gin

Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin in 1794.The cotton gin was a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber so you didn't have to do it by hand. Picking cotton by hand before the cotton gin was invented took an entire day to get one pound of cotton but once people had the help of the cotton gin, sometimes they were able to remove seeds from about fifty pounds of cotton. However, to make a profit off of his invention, Whitney started renting it off to people to use and charging them extra to have him pick the cotton himself. Because the taxes were so high, and he could make the machines, instead of being paid in money, he got to keep three fifths of the cotton that he picked.

After the cotton gin was invented, The amount of raw cotton each year doubled every decade or so after the 1800's. By mid century, America was making most of the cotton and then shipping it to New England to have turned into cloth. Because of this, Tobacco started to loose value and sugar started to grow and develop. Many times, the slaves would be the ones to pick the cotton, so the number of slaves states in the United States began to increase majorly. The slaves were forced to work out on the farm picking cotton, they made up about 72% of the manufacturing capacity in the

It helped the production of cotton by picking out the seeds so you didn't have to do it by hand. Doing it by hand would wore you out and hurt your fingers because the seeds almost felt like thorns. Instead of cleaning about one pound of cotton each day it made it so they could pick up to fifty pounds each day. Whitney let other people use his machines and when he did this, people would figure out how it worked and make their own version of the cotton gin and take credit for the idea, which then made Whitney lose a lot and not get credit for his