The Cotton Gin POV

The Cotton Gin: How The Industrial Revolution Started

By: Allen Bohanan

ISSUE 54 January 5, 1857

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The start of the Industrial Revolution was mainly based on the cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney.

I am in Richmond, Virginia  with the former Yale graduate, Eli Whitney to discuss about the invention of the cotton gin.

In 1873 Eli worked as a tutor for children on a plantation in Georgia. The very first day Eli went to the plantation, he saw for the very first time a cotton boll. As he walked to the small classroom, Eli noticed that cleaning the cotton was very difficult. You had to pick the seeds from cotton by hand, one seed at a time. Seeing the complication of cleaning cotton Eli had an idea that would change the world of cotton forever.

On that day, Eli wrote a letter to his father saying that his idea would be an innovation to the United States. Six months later, Eli made a fully working machine that would greatly help the economy of the South.

The cotton gin was a simple contraption made of rotating combs to separate the seeds from the cotton bolls. Thanks to the cotton gin, someone could clean 50 times the amount of cotton than a person cleaning by hand!

Over the years, many Southerners began planting cotton, and soon it became the South’s most important cash crop.  As 1860 reached, cotton sales overseas made more sale than all other United States exports combined!

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Yes, the cotton gin was very beneficial, but was it good for everyone?

For slaves, the cotton gin meant more work. Because of the cotton gin, more people wanted to plant cotton, so plantation owners bought more land and slaves. Because of the rising demand for cotton, the slave population in the South increased by six times! From 500,000 slaves to over three million slaves!