Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin
After Friday’s simulation of the United States’ economy, I thought it would be relevant to examine one of the most influential entrepreneurs in our history: Eli Whitney.
After graduating from Yale University in 1792, Whitney ended up living on southern plantations where he began to understand how inefficient it was for slaves to pick cotton. At the time, a single slave could be expected to pick and de-seed around 1 pound of cotton a day. Once Eli realized that this slow rate was due to having to pick out the cotton seeds by hand, he designed his famous cotton gin to mechanically take out the seeds. It worked by pulling the cotton through a mesh which was too small for the seeds to pass through but large enough for the cotton strands so that the soft fibers were separated. The cotton gin had large implications for the plantation south because it increased the productivity of a single slave so that 50 pounds of cotton could be de-seeded in a single day. Since, the cotton gin increased efficiency, the profits of southern plantations soared, and slaves suddenly became much more valuable to the point where the Southern states refused to abolish slavery. Hence, while Eli Whitney originally intended for the cotton gin to make a slave’s life easier, the actual effect of the cotton gin was to bring about the Civil War as the issue of slavery took on a much greater significance. Eli Whitney is an example of how a single man can influence the future of an entire nation with his inventions, and his case shows how the entrepreneurial spirit has shaped United States history.
If you want to learn more about Eli Whitney's inventions and how they shaped America, go check out part 2!
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