Eli Whitney And The Cotton Gin Essay

Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765. His father owned a farm on which Whitney had a small shop while he was a teenager. During the Revolutionary War, he made nails, which had become hard to find (U-S-History.com). After the war, Whitney continued to make items in his shop, which included women hatpins (Biogrphy.com). He graduated from Yale in 1792 at the age if twenty-seven years old and was considering becoming a lawyer. After graduation, he was hired as a tutor in South Carolina but after he heard his salary was cut in half he took up an offer from a woman in Georgia. Mrs. Nathaniel Greene, a widow of the War veteran, whom he met on his way to South Carolina offered him a job …show more content…
Whitney’s invention altered Southern economy by increasing the profit the plantation owner would get by raising and producing cotton. Whitney received a patent for his invention in 1794 but it did not guarantee him much profit. One of the reasons for the loss of expected profit was the decision to set up the ginning stations. Another reason was that the design of the Cotton Gin was simple and easy to imitate leading to Whitney losing money on the many other versions of his invention. The patent did not do well in preventing Whitney’s loss of profit because the other farmers claimed that their versions were actually “new” inventions (Schur).
The Cotton Gin had major effects on the Southern economy. The production of cotton double every ten years after 1800 because now more time could be pot toward growing and picking the cottonseeds rather than separating the cotton fiber from the seed casing. Cotton demand led to the development of other inventions to spin and weave the cotton. By mid-century, seventy-five percent of the world’s cotton was coming from North America and the South was supplying sixty percent of the United States exports