T H E SOUTHERN TIMES EIi Whitney had always understood Now, Eli Whitney's gins could supply depended ~ on slave labor. More machines. When he was just 12 Samuel Slater with all the cleaned and more slaves were bought. years old, he made his own violin. cotton Samuel's mills could spin. Soon, Within ten years, the price of a slave When he was a teenager, he cotton was no longer a luxury. Instead, doubled! Slavery became began to sell nails that he made with machines doing most of the work, entrenched in the south. with a machine he had invented. its price dropped, and it became a common cloth. Eli Builds 10,000 Guns A Problem With Cotton Eli Whitney could have stayed angry When Eli first showed Mrs. Greene his In 1792, when he was about 27 when others stole his gin invention. cotton gin, they invited many people to years old, Eli Whitney went south Instead, he decided to invent to teach. Instead, he ended up come and see the new invention. They realized their mistake when the gin was something else. He heard the inventing. He was living on a government needed guns made. Eli easily copied, and some people went Georgia plantation owned by Mrs. had never made a gun. Still, he away and made their own. Someone Catherine Greene, the widow of the wrote a letter to the government. In even broke in and stole Eli's gin one Patriot General Nathaniel Greene. the letter, Eli said, "I have a number night. As/a result, Eli made very little While living there, Eli spoke with of workmen & apprentices,… I Mrs. Greene. He also spoke with money on his invention. should like to undertake to other farmers in the region. He Manufacture Ten or Fifteen found that they grew little cotton. Eli's Gin Encourages Slavery Thousand Stand of Arms." This was because the kind of With Eli's gin, the demand for cotton cotton that grew will in southern soil exploded. To meet the demand, many The government asked 27 was difficult to clean. It had small, southern fanners began to devote their companies to make guns. Most got tough seeds that were very hard to whole plantations to cotton growing. a contract for about 1,000 weapons. separate from the cotton itself. In Land that was thought useless was But Eli's contract was different. The fact, it took a slave a whole day to planted with this easy-to-grow, easy-to- government knew about Eli's separate one pound of cotton from harvest, and-now- easy-to-clean cotton. mechanical skills. So, his contract its seeds. For southern farmers, the called for him to make 10,000 guns. cost of growing cotton was just too Until the 1790s, slavery was slowly high. fading away in the South. That is Other gun makers made their guns because southern fanners had no by hand. Eli had a different idea. For Eli Solves the Problem crops that made enough money to pay each part of a gun, he made a metal All the people with whom Eli spoke to keep slaves. Then, Eli invented his mold. He also made the machines to wished there were a machine that gin. Southern fanners realized they had make the molds. The metal molds could do the tedious, time- found their cash crop. It was cotton. then turned out exactly the same consuming task of separating Soon, great plantations filled up with parts-trigger; barrel, and so on-for cotton and seeds. Eli wrote to his fields of cotton. These fields gun after gun after gun. This meant father about what he had heard. that the parts were interchangeable- "There were a number of very -that is, each part of one gun was respectable Gentlemen at Mrs. exactly the same as each part of any Greene's," he wrote, "who all other Whitney-made gun. Regular agreed that if a machine could be workers-not skilled gunsmiths-made invented it would be a great thing many parts then assembled them both to the Country and the into many guns. inventor." This method was much faster than Eli knew he could invent such a making guns by hand. It also was machine. So he set to work. First, much less expensive. he studied how slaves moved their hands as they cleaned the cotton. Eli Whitney was not the first to think Then, he began to build a machine of using interchangeable parts. that made the same motions as the However, he is the one who made slaves' hands. using them famous. Later, Eli used these same skills to make clocks It took Eli only ten days to create from interchangeable parts. After his cotton gin. Eli's first cotton gin that, more people could afford to was cranked by hand. Even so, it have a clock in the house. separated cotton and seeds 50 times faster than could the hands of a slave! Name _________________________________ Date _______ Class _____ Each rectangle represents 25,000 bales of cotton . Study the pictograph. 1790 Then, use it to answer these questions. Circle the correct answer for the first two 1795 questions. Write your answer on the lines for 1 number 3. 1800 1. In what year did the United States first 1805 produce over 25,000 bales of cotton? 1810 a. 1790 b. 1795 c. 1 800 2. What do you think happened to cotton-growing by the year 1815? a. More cotton was grown. b. Less cotton was grown. c. The same amount of cotton was grown. 3. How much more cotton was grown in 1810 than in 1790? a. 100,000 bales b. 120,000 bales c. 160,000 bales 4. What was the first thing Eli invented? ____________________________________________ 5. What type of cotton grew well in southern soil? _____________________________________ 6. How long did it take Eli to invent his cotton gin? _____________________________________ 7. Why did Eli think he could build 10,000 guns for the government? _______________________ ______________________________________________________________________________ 8. What two things were the results of his gun making method? ______________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 9. PREDICT what effect the cotton gin will have on SLAVERY in the United States? How will it create FURTHER CONFLICT between north and south?_________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ .