I have been reading about Eli Whitney. There is a fascinating story behind him.

He graduated from Yale and took a job. But when he arrived, he found out the job only paid half of what it promised. Penniless, he went with a friend to visit Mrs. Greene, a Georgian plantation owner.

Mrs. Greene saw how handy he was at building innovated items. She presented him with a problem that had been plaguing cotton growers for decades- how to separate the seed from the fiber. He came up with a simple solution in ten days.

The Cotton Gin would change the world. Before, cotton was expensive, and only the rich could afford it. Whitney’s invention lowered its cost 99%. That is like going from $500 to $5. Suddenly everyone could afford cotton clothing. Cotton clothing was comfortable and easy to clean, compared to other materials like leather or wool. Not only could people afford comfortable clothing, they could clean it easier, meaning people where cleaner.

But there was a bad side to this invention. Slavery had been on the decline. It just wasn’t profitable to grow cotton. The American South could not compete with cotton growers in other parts of the world. With cotton cheap, it was in high demand. People were needed to grow and process it. Those people were slaves. Suddenly, slaves became valuable. Instead of being worth $50 or less, before the invention, some where going for a $1000. Slavery became big business. The South became rich and powerful.

Whitney never made much money off the Cotton Gin. His greed led to cotton farmers buying cheaper counterfeits, or just building their own. Whitney wasted whatever money he did make paying legal fees to fight the patient infringements. He finally won, a year before his patient went public, where anyone could use it.

Bankrupted, he went to the North. He worked with the military to build a new invention- a musket that could be massed produced with interchangeable parts. Prior to that, guns were all individually handcrafted and parts could not be interchanged. This also led to the invention of the mass production process, which helped the North become rich and powerful.

Eli’s Cotton Gin and his process of mass production have both helped the human race around the world. We wouldn’t be where we are today without either. However, it came with a cost- the Civil War.

Would there have been a Civil War had Eli never been born? Perhaps, but it wouldn’t have been over Slavery in the South against the Industrial North.