The cotton industry is one of the most ancient. One or more of the many
species of the cotton plant is indigenous to four continents, Asia,
Africa, and the Americas, and the manufacture of the fiber into yarn
and cloth seems to have developed independently in each of them. We find
mention of cotton in India fifteen hundred years before Christ. The East
Indians, with only the crudest machinery, spun yarn and wove cloth as
diaphanous as the best appliances of the present day have been able to
produce.
Alexander the Great introduced the "vegetable wool" into Europe. The
fable of the "vegetable lamb of Tartary" persisted almost down to modern
times. The Moors cultivated cotton in Spain on an extensive scale, but
after their expulsion the industry languished. The East India Company
imported cotton fabrics into England early in the seventeenth century,
and these fabrics made their way in spite of the bitter opposition of
the woolen interests, which were at times strong enough to have the use
of cotton cloth prohibited by law. But when the Manchester spinners
took up the manufacture of cotton, the fight was won. The Manchester
spinners, however, used linen for their warp threads, for without
machinery they could not spin threads sufficiently strong from the
short-fibered Indian cotton.
In the New World the Spanish explorers found cotton and cotton fabrics
in use everywhere. Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, Magellan, and others speak
of the various uses to which the fiber was put, and admired the striped
awnings and the colored mantles made by the natives. It seems probable
that cotton was in use in the New World quite as early as in India.
The first English settlers in America found little or no cotton among
the natives. But they soon began to import the fiber from the West
Indies, whence came also the plant itself into the congenial soil and
climate of the Southern colonies. During the colonial period, however,
cotton never became the leading crop, hardly an important crop. Cotton
could be grown profitably only where there was an abundant supply of
exceedingly cheap labor, and labor in America, white or black, was never
and could never be as cheap as in India. American slaves could be much
more profitably employed in the cultivation of rice and indigo.
Three varieties of the cotton plant were grown in the South. Two kinds
of the black-seed or long-staple variety thrived in the sea-islands and
along the coast from Delaware to Georgia, but only the hardier and more
prolific green-seed or short-staple cotton could be raised inland. The
labor of cultivating and harvesting cotton of any kind was very great.
The fiber, growing in bolls resembling a walnut in size and shape,
had to be taken by hand from every boll, as it has to be today, for no
satisfactory cotton harvester has yet been invented. But in the case
of the green-seed or upland cotton, the only kind which could ever be
cultivated extensively in the South, there was another and more serious
obstacle in the way, namely, the difficulty of separating the fiber
from the seeds. No machine yet devised could perform this tedious and
unprofitable task. For the black-seed or sea-island cotton, the churka,
or roller gin, used in India from time immemorial, drawing the fiber
slowly between a pair of rollers to push out the seeds, did the work
imperfectly, but this churka was entirely useless for the green-seed
variety, the fiber of which clung closely to the seed and would yield
only to human hands. The quickest and most skillful pair of hands could
separate only a pound or two of lint from its three pounds of seeds in
an ordinary working day. Usually the task was taken up at the end of the
day, when the other work was done. The slaves sat round an overseer who
shook the dozing and nudged the slow. It was also the regular task for a
rainy day. It is not surprising, then, that cotton was scarce, that
flax and wool in that day were the usual textiles, that in 1783 wool
furnished about seventy-seven per cent, flax about eighteen per cent,
and cotton only about five per cent of the clothing of the people of
Europe and the United States.
That series of inventions designed for the manufacture of cloth, and
destined to transform Great Britain, the whole world, in fact, was
already completed in Franklin's time. Beginning with the flying shuttle
of John Kay in 1738, followed by the spinning jenny of James Hargreaves
in 1764, the water-frame of Richard Arkwright in 1769, and the mule of
Samuel Crompton ten years later, machines were provided which could spin
any quantity of fiber likely to be offered. And when, in 1787, Edmund
Cartwright, clergyman and poet, invented the self-acting loom to which
power might be applied, the series was complete. These inventions,
supplementing the steam engine of James Watt, made the Industrial
Revolution. They destroyed the system of cottage manufactures in England
and gave birth to the great textile establishments of today.
The mechanism for the production of cloth on a great scale was provided,
if only the raw material could be found.
The romance of cotton begins on a New England farm. It was on a farm in
the town (township) of Westboro, in Worcester County, Massachusetts, in
the year 1765, that Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, was born.
Eli's father was a man of substance and standing in the community,
a mechanic as well as a farmer, who occupied his leisure in making
articles for his neighbors. We are told that young Eli displayed a
passion for tools almost as soon as he could walk, that he made a violin
at the age of twelve and about the same time took his father's watch
to pieces surreptitiously and succeeded in putting it together again so
successfully as to escape detection. He was able to make a table knife
to match the others of a broken set. As a boy of fifteen or sixteen,
during the War of Independence, he was supplying the neighborhood with
hand-made nails and various other articles. Though he had not been a
particularly apt pupil in the schools, he conceived the ambition of
attending college; and so, after teaching several winters in rural
schools, he went to Yale. He appears to have paid his own way through
college by the exercise of his mechanical talents. He is said to have
mended for the college some imported apparatus which otherwise would
have had to go to the old country for repairs. "There was a good
mechanic spoiled when you came to college," he was told by a carpenter
in the town. There was no "Sheff" at Yale in those days to give young
men like Whitney scientific instruction; so, defying the bent of his
abilities, Eli went on with his academic studies, graduated in 1792,
at the age of twenty-seven, and decided to be a teacher or perhaps a
lawyer.
Like so many young New Englanders of the time, Whitney sought employment
in the South. Having received the promise of a position in South
Carolina, he embarked at New York, soon after his graduation, on a
sailing vessel bound for Savannah. On board he met the widow of General
Nathanael Greene of Revolutionary fame, and this lady invited him to
visit her plantation at Mulberry Grove, near Savannah. What happened
then is best told by Eli Whitney himself, in a letter to his father,
written at New Haven, after his return from the South some months later,
though the spelling master will probably send Whitney to the foot of the
class:
"New Haven, Sept. 11th, 1793.
"... I went from N. York with the family of the late Major General
Greene to Georgia. I went immediately with the family to their
Plantation about twelve miles from Savannah with an expectation of
spending four or five days and then proceed into Carolina to take the
school as I have mentioned in former letters. During this time I
heard much said of the extreme difficulty of ginning Cotton, that is,
separating it from its seeds. There were a number of very respectable
Gentlemen at Mrs. Greene's who all agreed that if a machine could be
invented which would clean the cotton with expedition, it would be a
great thing both to the Country and to the inventor. I involuntarily
happened to be thinking on the subject and struck out a plan of a
Machine in my mind, which I communicated to Miller (who is agent to
the Executors of Genl. Greene and resides in the family, a man of
respectability and property), he was pleased with the Plan and said if
I would pursue it and try an experiment to see if it would answer, he
would be at the whole expense, I should loose nothing but my time, and
if I succeeded we would share the profits. Previous to this I found I
was like to be disappointed in my school, that is, instead of a hundred,
I found I could get only fifty Guineas a year. I however held the
refusal of the school until I tried some experiments. In about ten Days
I made a little model, for which I was offered, if I would give up all
right and title to it, a Hundred Guineas. I concluded to relinquish
my school and turn my attention to perfecting the Machine. I made one
before I came away which required the labor of one man to turn it and
with which one man will clean ten times as much cotton as he can in any
other way before known and also cleanse it much better than in the usual
mode. This machine may be turned by water or with a horse, with the
greatest ease, and one man and a horse will do more than fifty men with
the old machines. It makes the labor fifty times less, without throwing
any class of People out of business.
"I returned to the Northward for the purpose of having a machine made
on a large scale and obtaining a Patent for the invention. I went to
Philadelphia* soon after I arrived, made myself acquainted with the
steps necessary to obtain a Patent, took several of the steps and the
Secretary of State Mr. Jefferson agreed to send the Patent to me
as soon it could be made out--so that I apprehended no difficulty in
obtaining the Patent--Since I have been here I have employed several
workmen in making machines and as soon as my business is such that I can
leave it a few days, I shall come to Westboro'**. I think it is probable
I shall go to Philadelphia again before I come to Westboro', and when I
do come I shall be able to stay but few days. I am certain I can obtain
a patent in England. As soon as I have got a Patent in America I shall
go with the machine which I am now making, to Georgia, where I shall
stay a few weeks to see it at work. From thence I expect to go to
England, where I shall probably continue two or three years. How
advantageous this business will eventually prove to me, I cannot say. It
is generally said by those who know anything about it, that I shall make
a Fortune by it. I have no expectation that I shall make an independent
fortune by it, but think I had better pursue it than any other business
into which I can enter. Something which cannot be foreseen may frustrate
my expectations and defeat my Plan; but I am now so sure of success that
ten thousand dollars, if I saw the money counted out to me, would not
tempt me to give up my right and relinquish the object. I wish you, sir,
not to show this letter nor communicate anything of its contents to any
body except My Brothers and Sister, ENJOINING it on them to keep the
whole A PROFOUND SECRET."
* Then the national capital.
** Hammond, "Correspondence of Eli Whitney," American
Historical Review, vol. III, p. 99. The other citations in
this chapter are from the same source, unless otherwise
stated.
The invention, however, could not be kept "a profound secret," for
knowledge of it was already out in the cotton country. Whitney's
hostess, Mrs. Greene, had shown the wonderful machine to some friends,
who soon spread the glad tidings, and planters, near and far, had
come to Mulberry Grove to see it. The machine was of very simple
construction; any blacksmith or wheelwright, knowing the principle of
the design, could make one. Even before Whitney could obtain his patent,
cotton gins based on his were being manufactured and used.
Whitney received his patent in March, 1794, and entered on his new
work with enthusiasm. His partner, Phineas Miller, was a cultivated New
England gentleman, a graduate of Yale College, who, like Whitney, had
sought his fortune as a teacher in the South. He had been a tutor in
the Greene household and on General Greene's death had taken over
the management of his estates. He afterwards married Mrs. Greene. The
partners decided to manufacture the machines in New Haven, Whitney
to give his time to the production, Miller to furnish the capital and
attend to the firm's interests in the South.
At the outset the partners blundered seriously in their plan for
commercializing the invention. They planned to buy seed cotton and clean
it themselves; also to clean cotton for the planters on the familiar
toll system, as in grinding grain, taking a toll of one pound of cotton
out of every three. "Whitney's plan in Georgia," says a recent writer,
"as shown by his letters and other evidence, was to own all the gins and
gin all the cotton made in the country. It is but human nature that this
sort of monopoly should be odious to any community."* Miller appears to
have calculated that the planters could afford to pay for the use of the
new invention about one-half of all the profits they derived from its
use. An equal division, between the owners of the invention on the one
hand and the cotton growers on the other, of all the super-added wealth
arising from the invention, seemed to him fair. Apparently the full
meaning of such an arrangement did not enter his mind. Perhaps Miller
and Whitney did not see at first that the new invention would cause a
veritable industrial revolution, or that the system they planned, if it
could be made effective, would make them absolute masters of the cotton
country, with the most stupendous monopoly in the world. Nor do they
appear to have realized that, considering the simple construction of
their machine and the loose operation of the patent law at that time,
the planters of the South would never submit to so great a tribute as
they proposed to exact. Their attempt in the first instance to set up
an unfair monopoly brought them presently into a sea of troubles, which
they never passed out of, even when they afterwards changed their tack
and offered to sell the machines with a license, or a license alone, at
a reasonable price.
* Tompkins, "Cotton and Cotton Oil", p. 86.
Misfortune pursued the partners from the beginning. Whitney writes to
his father from New Haven in May, 1794, that his machines in Georgia are
working well, but that he apprehends great difficulty in manufacturing
them as fast as they are needed. In March of the following year he
writes again, saying that his factory in New Haven has been destroyed
by fire: "When I returned home from N. York I found my property all in
ashes! My shop, all my tools, material and work equal to twenty finished
cotton machines all gone. The manner in which it took fire is altogether
unaccountable." Besides, the partners found themselves in distress
for lack of capital. Then word came from England that the Manchester
spinners had found the ginned cotton to contain knots, and this was
sufficient to start the rumor throughout the South that Whitney's gin
injured the cotton fiber and that cotton cleaned by them was worthless.
It was two years before this ghost was laid. Meanwhile Whitney's
patent was being infringed on every hand. "They continue to clean great
quantities of cotton with Lyon's Gin and sell it advantageously while
the Patent ginned cotton is run down as good for nothing," writes Miller
to Whitney in September, 1797. Miller and Whitney brought suits against
the infringers but they could obtain no redress in the courts.
Whitney's attitude of mind during these troubles is shown in his
letters. He says the statement that his machines injure the cotton is
false, that the source of the trouble is bad cotton, which he ventures
to think is improved fifty per cent by the use of his gin, and that
it is absurd to say that the cotton could be injured in any way in the
process of cleaning. "I think," he says, writing to Miller, "you will
be able to convince the CANDID that this is quite a mistaken notion and
them that WILL NOT BELIEVE may be damn'd." Again, writing later to
his friend Josiah Stebbins in New England: "I have a set of the most
Depraved villains to combat and I might almost as well go to HELL in
search of HAPPINESS as apply to a Georgia Court for Justice." And
again: "You know I always believed in the 'DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE.'
I thought I was long ago sufficiently 'grounded and stablished' in this
Doctrine. But God Almighty is continually pouring down cataracts of
testimony upon me to convince me of this fact. 'Lord I believe,
help thou,' not 'mine unbelief,' but me to overcome the rascality of
mankind." His partner Miller, on the other hand, is inclined to be more
philosophical and suggests to Whitney that "we take the affairs of this
world patiently and that the little dust which we may stir up about
cotton may after all not make much difference with our successors one
hundred, much less one thousand years hence." Miller, however, finally
concluded that, "the prospect of making anything by ginning in this
State [Georgia] is at an end. Surreptitious gins are being erected in
every part of the country; and the jurymen at Augusta have come to an
understanding among themselves, that they will never give a verdict in
our favor, let the merits of the case be as they may."*
* Cited in Roe, "English and American Tool Builders", p.
153.
Miller and Whitney were somewhat more fortunate in other States than
in Georgia though they nowhere received from the cotton gin enough to
compensate them for their time and trouble nor more than a pitiable
fraction of the great value of their invention. South Carolina, in
1801, voted them fifty thousand dollars for their patent rights, twenty
thousand dollars to be paid down and the remainder in three annual
payments of ten thousand dollars each. "We get but a song for it," wrote
Whitney, "in comparison with the worth of the thing, but it is securing
something." Why the partners were willing to take so small a sum was
later explained by Miller. They valued the rights for South Carolina
at two hundred thousand dollars, but, since the patent law was being
infringed with impunity, they were willing to take half that amount;
"and had flattered themselves," wrote Miller, "that a sense of dignity
and justice on the part of that honorable body [the Legislature] would
not have countenanced an offer of a less sum than one hundred thousand
dollars. Finding themselves, however, to be mistaken in this opinion,
and entertaining a belief that the failure of such negotiation, after
it commenced, would have a tendency to diminish the prospect, already
doubtful, of enforcing the Patent Law, it was concluded to be best
under existing circumstances to accept the very inadequate sum of fifty
thousand dollars offered by the Legislature and thereby relinquish and
entirely abandon three-fourths of the actual value of the property."
But even the fifty thousand dollars was not collected without
difficulty. South Carolina suspended the contract, after paying twenty
thousand dollars, and sued Miller and Whitney for recovery of the
sum paid, on the ground that the partners had not complied with the
conditions. Whitney succeeded, in 1805, in getting the Legislature to
reinstate the contract and pay him the remainder of the money. Miller,
discouraged and broken by the long struggle, had died in the meantime.
The following passage from a letter written by Whitney in February,
1805, to Josiah Stebbins, gives Whitney's views as to the treatment he
had received at the hands of the authorities. He is writing from the
residence of a friend near Orangeburg, South Carolina.
"The principal object of my present excursion to this Country was to get
this business set right; which I have so far effected as to induce the
Legislature of this State to recind all their former SUSPENDING LAWS and
RESOLUTIONS, to agree once more to pay the sum of 30,000 Dollars which
was due and make the necessary appropriations for that purpose. I have
as yet however obtained but a small part of this payment. The residue is
promised me in July next. Thus you see my RECOMPENSE OF REWARD is as the
land of Canaan was to the Jews, resting a long while in promise. If the
Nations with whom I have to contend are not as numerous as those opposed
to the Israelites, they are certainly much greater HEATHENS, having
their hearts hardened and their understanding blinded, to make,
propagate and believe all manner of lies. Verily, Stebbins, I have had
much vexation of spirit in this business. I shall spend forty thousand
dollars to obtain thirty, and it will all end in vanity at last. A
contract had been made with the State of Tennessee which now hangs
SUSPENDED. Two attempts have been made to induce the State of No.
Carolina to RECIND their CONTRACT, neither of which have succeeded. Thus
you see Brother Steb. Sovreign and Independent States warped by INTEREST
will be ROGUES and misled by Demagogues will be FOOLS. They have spent
much time, MONEY and CREDIT, to avoid giving me a small compensation,
for that which to them is worth millions."
Meanwhile North Carolina had agreed to buy the rights for the State
on terms that yielded Whitney about thirty thousand dollars, and it is
estimated that he received about ten thousand dollars from Tennessee,
making his receipts in all about ninety thousand dollars, before
deducting costs of litigation and other losses. The cotton gin was not
profitable to its inventor. And yet no invention in history ever so
suddenly transformed an industry and created enormous wealth. Eight
years before Whitney's invention, eight bales of cotton, landed at
Liverpool, were seized on the ground that so large a quantity of cotton
could not have been produced in the United States. The year before that
invention the United States exported less than one hundred and forty
thousand pounds of cotton; the year after it, nearly half a million
pounds; the next year over a million and a half; a year later still,
over six million; by 1800, nearly eighteen million pounds a year. And
by 1845 the United States was producing producing seven-eighths of the
world's cotton. Today the United States produces six to eight billion
pounds of cotton annually, and ninety-nine per cent of this is the
upland or green-seed cotton, which is cleaned on the Whitney type of gin
and was first made commercially available by Whitney's invention.*
* Roe, "English and American Tool Builders", pp. 150-51.
More than half of this enormous crop is still exported in spite of the
great demand at home. Cotton became and has continued to be the greatest
single export of the United States. In ordinary years its value is
greater than the combined value of the three next largest exports. It
is on cotton that the United States has depended for the payment of its
trade balance to Europe.
Other momentous results followed on the invention of the cotton gin. In
1793 slavery seemed a dying institution, North and South. Conditions of
soil and climate made slavery unprofitable in the North. On many of
the indigo, rice, and tobacco plantations in the South there were
more slaves than could be profitably employed, and many planters were
thinking of emancipating their slaves, when along came this simple but
wonderful machine and with it the vision of great riches in cotton; for
while slaves could not earn their keep separating the cotton from its
seeds by hand, they could earn enormous profits in the fields, once the
difficulty of extracting the seeds was solved. Slaves were no longer a
liability but an asset. The price of "field hands" rose, and continued
to rise. If the worn-out lands of the seaboard no longer afforded
opportunity for profitable employment, the rich new lands of the
Southwest called for laborers, and yet more laborers. Taking slaves with
them, younger sons pushed out into the wilderness, became possessed of
great tracts of fertile land, and built up larger plantations than those
upon which they had been born. Cotton became King of the South.
The supposed economic necessity of slave labor led great men to defend
slavery, and politics in the South became largely the defense of slavery
against the aggression, real or fancied, of the free North. The rift
between the sections became a chasm. Then came the War of Secession.
Though Miller was dead, Whitney carried on the fight for his rights
in Georgia. His difficulties were increased by a patent which the
Government at Philadelphia issued in May, 1796, to Hogden Holmes, a
mechanic of Augusta, for an improvement in the cotton gin. The Holmes
machines were soon in common use, and it was against the users of these
that many of the suits for infringement were brought. Suit after suit
ran its course in the Georgia courts, without a single decision in the
inventor's favor. At length, however, in December, 1806, the validity of
Whitney's patent was finally determined by decision of the United States
Circuit Court in Georgia. Whitney asked for a perpetual injunction
against the Holmes machine, and the court, finding that his invention
was basic, granted him all that he asked.
By this time, however, the life of the patent had nearly run its course.
Whitney applied to Congress for a renewal, but, in spite of all his
arguments and a favorable committee report, the opposition from the
cotton States proved too strong, and his application was denied. Whitney
now had other interests. He was a great manufacturer of firearms, at New
Haven, and as such we shall meet him again in a later chapter.