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We also had our class presentation this past week! We were quite excited to hear from all the other groups as well as share with everyone else some of what we have learned!

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We’re so excited to have conducted our interview this week!  We met with UW History Associate Professor, Moon-Ho Jung.  He specializes in race, politics, and Asian American history.  One of his notable written works is Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation.  He was able to provide us with some interesting information about labor and social implications surrounding Eli Whitney’s cotton gin.

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This is another interesting video, which highlights some key points about the cotton economy

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This video provides a succinct overview of the cotton gin and its affects.

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“I remain relatively certain that had there been no Eli Whitney and no cotton gin, Southerners would have found other uses for their slaves.” -- George H. Daniels

One interesting viewpoint we’ve come across is that of Dr. Daniels from Northwestern University.  He disagrees with the idea that the cotton gin directly influenced slavery and the Civil War but rather human attitudes and habits are to blame.

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“ In 1790, America produced 1,500 pounds of cotton.  By 1800, production had increased to 35,000 pounds.  By 1815, production had reached 100,000 pounds. In 1848, production exceeded 1,000,000 pounds.” -www.teachingushistory.org

The cotton gin helped improve the efficiency of cotton picking and thus lead to a large increase in American cotton production. 

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The First Cotton Gins

Elis Whitney’s cotton gin was not the first cotton gin. Nor was it the first cotton gin that rapidly expanded the cotton industry. The first gin was a hand-powered, two part machine consisting of a narrow roller and flat base. Ginning occurred by rolling the roller over the seed cotton which pinches the seed out of the lint without crushing the cotton seed. This machine could predate the iron gin. The earliest cotton gins have been traced back long before the 18th century around the world. The single roller gin was used early on in the American Southwest, but it was inefficient. It was a bottleneck for the Chinese and Indian cotton economies.  Indian gin makers constantly experimented with different configurations to increase efficiency. The roller gin was created in response to increase efficiency through a form of automation. This variation arrived to America on French and British merchant ships, inspiring Elis Whitney’s variation of the cotton gin.

Source: “Inventing the cotton gin : machine and myth in antebellum America” Angela Lakwete, 1949

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Whitney quickly learned that Southern planters were in desperate need of a way to make the growing of cotton profitable. Long-staple cotton, which was easy to separate from its seeds, could be grown only along the coast. The one variety that grew inland had sticky green seeds that were time-consuming to pick out of the fluffy white cotton bolls. Whitney was encouraged to find a solution to this problem by his employer, Catherine Greene, whose support, both moral and financial were critical to this effort.

www.eliwhitney.org

One great resource we’ve found is www.eliwhitney.org.  This is the site for the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop in Hamden, Connecticut.

While cotton that was easy to manage could be grown on the coast, those more inland had to grow the kind that required much more effort to pick.  Eli Whitney felt determined to figure out a solution.

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In class today, we had elevator pitches. Jackie gave our team pitch and represented us nicely! We got to listen to what everyone else is researching and heard about a lot of interesting topics! We can’t wait to delve deeper into our topic and also see what everyone else discovers in their research!

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Check out our awesome team logo drawn by Alex and digitized by Jackie! It was inspired by the strife and oppression that resulted from the cotton gin.

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Eli Whitney made almost no money from his invention of the cotton gin. Copies of his patented gin design quickly flooded the market from numerous manufacturers, and Whitney found it was impossible to sue all of the offenders.

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Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin

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Whitney’s [cotton] gin not only helped make many people rich on both sides of the Atlantic but also reinvigorated slavery, turned child labor into a necessity, and paved the way for the American Civil War. Perhaps at no other time in history has someone with a simple, well-meaning invention generated more general prosperity, personal disappointment, and inadvertent suffering than Eli Whitney with his gin. That is quite a lot of consequence for a simple rotating drum.

Bill Bryson At Home - A Short History of Private Life

(via namssorg)

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March 14, 1794