Cotton gin

Last week we looked at life in the 19^th century, and how different it was compared to today. Many topics were explored, and for this blog I want to look at the impacts caused by one significant technological advancement that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, the Cotton Gin.

The Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18^th century and ended in the 19^th, was a period of time when many inventions were created that largely affected people’s way of living. One of these inventions was the Cotton Gin, which was created by Eli Whitney in 1794. While it doesn't seem that important, agriculturally, economically, and socially it had a massive impact.

The device separated cotton fibers from the cotton seeds, which sped up the cotton production process immensely because before the cotton gin was created, workers (usually slaves) had to separate the fibers by hand, which would take hours and only produce a small amount. By speeding up the cotton production process, this lowered the cost it took to produce cotton fibers. This hugely impacted the agriculture of cotton, because now that it could be produced much more effectively, cotton was fairly cheap to produce, and so it became widely used in clothing. This caused cotton production to skyrocket, and many farmers in the south moved to farming cotton, and they did this on large scale cotton plantations.

The large scale cotton plantations created because of the cotton gin affected slaves drastically. While on the one hand slaves no longer had to separate the cotton seeds from the fiber, the large scale plantations created more work for them. Before Eli’s cotton gin was created, about 700,000 slaves lived in the South, and in 1850 more than 3 million slaves were in the South. This increase in the slave population in the South after the cotton gin was patented shows what an impact the invention had economically on the south. Not only that, but the growing demand for cotton created a system in which the South relied largely on slaves economically.

This economic reliance on the slave trade to sustain the cotton business in the South eventually led to the Civil War. High cotton tariffs began to be imposed by northern states, and the election of President Lincoln caused unrest in the South, because he had anti-slavery sentiments. These factors caused the South to secede from the Union, which started the Civil War.

Overall the cotton gin was monumental to changing the economic structure of the South and causing the collapse of slavery. It is incredible to really think about this, because today the cotton gin is viewed as another machine that does something useful. And while it is useful, it is much more important than just a machine.