brought to the Southern states; because it cheapened and extended the use of an almost necessary arti

ant. Its essential parts are a number of saws which tear the fiber from the seeds, some stiff brushes used to remove the fiber from the saws, and a revolving fan which blows the lighter substance of the cott

very tool in the farm workshop with the ease and skill of an old workman. He made a violin before he was twelve and later he came to be noted in the neighborhood as a skilful mender of fiddles. He also turned his attention to making nails, which in Revolutionary days were made by hand, and beca

ad become interested in young Whitney and invited him to make her plantation his home. She noted his inventive skill, and one day when a group of Georgia planters was discussing at her home the desirability of a machine for removing cotton-seeds from the fiber, Mrs. Greene sai

with his task, and was heard early and late hammering, sawing, and filing. No one was admitted to the room but Mrs. Greene and Phineas Miller, the tutor of Mrs. Greene's children. At the outset Whitney had neither money nor tools

achine. The spectators were not slow in realizing the success and the significance of the invention. They saw that with this little machine one man could separate as much cotton from the seed in one day as

which had been done him, Whitney left Georgia and went to Connecticut to complete his invention. But he had scarcely left Savannah when two other claimants for the honor of

the machines outright. In the first place, it required a larger capital than the firm had to manufacture the necessary number of machines. In the second place, no one firm could make gins fast enough to supply the rapidly increasing demand, and consequently great encouragement was given to infringements on the patent rights. Unending troubles beset the new firm. Whitney himself was a victim to severe illness in the winter of 1794. Scarlet fever raged that year in New Haven, Connecticut, where the manufacturing was being done, and many of the workmen in the gi

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always believed that I should have had no difficulty in causing my rights to be respected, if it had been less valuable and been used only by a small portion of the community. But the use of this machine being immensely profitable to almost every planter in the cotton districts, all were interested in trespassing on the patent right, and each kept the other in countenance.... At one time but few men in Georgia dared to come into cour

was stolen; others sought to rob him of his honor; he was opposed by an unlimited train

were emigrating for the want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened new views to them which set the whole country in active motion. Individuals who were depressed with poverty and sunk in idleness have suddenly risen to wealth and respectability. Our debts have been paid off, our capitals have increased, and our lands have trebled themselves in value. We cannot express the weight of the obligation the country owes t

e. Partly because of this fact and partly because the Revolutionary War was just over, the South lay dormant; its plantations were heavily mortgaged, its people were moving away in streams. Then came a little machine that awoke the South from its

f-century of our nation's existence. While he was quietly sleeping in his grave, the very earth was shaken with the tread of contending armies that he had done more than any other one man to call forth to battle; for there is little doubt that but for the invention of the cotton-gin slavery would not have lived out the century of the Revolution." Macaulay says: "What Peter the Great did to make R

king the different parts of firearms by machinery, so that any part of a weapon would fit any other like weapon equally well. This princ