Tag Archives: Eli Whitney

BEFORE ELI Whitney invented the cotton gin, Southern plantation owners were beginning to wonder if they should not give up their slaves. There was a good market for cotton; the English were buying all the cotton they could get to make into cloth in their new factories. It took too long to separate raw cotton from the seed and raising cotton simply did not pay. If the plantation owners stopped raising cotton, they would really have no need for slaves. Then after the invention of the cotton gin, raising cotton began to pay — and pay well! Cotton became the South’s big cash crop and the more cotton the plantation owners raised, the more slaves they needed. So, slavery grew in the South while it was dying out in other parts of the world. Slavery had been outlawed in the British colonies in 1833, in the French colonies fifteen years later; by this time, too, most of the Latin-American republics had liberated their slaves. The economy of the South was based on slave labour and the vast estates of the plantation owners, with their mansions, slave quarters and outbuildings, resembled the manors of feudal Europe. As a matter of fact, there was much in Southern society that resembled feudalism. The plantation owners formed a kind of aristocracy and lived the lives of country gentlemen; they owned most of the slaves and most of the land. The poorer Southerners also lived by farming, but their land holdings were small and they worked in the fields beside the one or two slaves they could afford. The South had little industry. In the North, on the other hand, while thousands of people still lived by farming, industry was growing day by day. The North needed free labour rather than slaves and Northerners began …

IT TOOK the work of many inventors to bring about the changes of the Industrial Revolution, but the man recognized as the greatest inventor of the age was James Watt, whose name is linked with the steam engine. Actually the steam engine was invented and used in coal mines long before Watt was born. What he invented was a greatly improved type of steam engine which was practical enough to make steam power available to factories for the first time. As a result of his invention, many large power-driven factories soon sprang into being, some of them employing hundreds of workers. Such factories could produce cloth so cheaply that it was almost impossible for people to make a living by spinning and weaving by hand in their homes. All the important changes of the Industrial Revolution took place during the span of James Watt’s lifetime. In 1736, the year of his birth in Scotland, spinning and weaving was still being done at home. Peasants not only made their own clothes, but also wove cloth to sell in the market place. Almost every country cottage had its spinning wheel and weaving loom. Wooden tubs were used to wash the raw wool and to color the finished cloth with dye. On the land surrounding the cottage, each weaver usually had a garden and kept a cow or two, some poultry and a horse. It was natural that he should feel close to the land, for his people had been farmers for many centuries. During the planting seasons and the busy times of harvest, he and his family let the spinning wheels and the loom stand idle while they worked in the fields. During the growing seasons and the long winter months, they devoted full time to spinning and weaving. It took five …