Question

How did the invention of the cotton gin affect the economy of the South? Did this technology affect the North as well?

Answer 1

It probably postponed the end of slavery by making slave labor more economical. Cotton wasn't such a lucrative crop when every pod of cotton had to be separated by hand. Cotton could be picked a lot faster than it could be processed.

I doubt slavery would have lasted much longer or been as widespread as it was without the invention of the cotton gin. Slaves were expensive to keep--it cost money to feed, house, and provide them healthcare. And usually, slave owners followed the economic incentive to keep their slaves healthy. The expense of owning slaves didn't end with the purchase. So, unless there were a big return on the labor, there wasn't much reason to keep them.

With the cotton gin, cotton became a much more worthwhile crop because the ratio of labor to output quantity decreased significantly. Now the plantation owners could turn a large profit on the use of slave labor. The more slaves and cotton fields they had, the more money they could earn. This wasn't so much the case before the cotton gin.

It was invented as a way to increase the production of cotton by speeding up the removal of seeds from the cotton fiber. Although the Cotton Gin did not make Eli Whitney much money, it benefited the South and their economy. The Cotton Gin also increased the arguments between the North and the South.

Answer 2

Background | Lesson | Student Reading | Vocabulary | Activities

STUDENT READING:

In 1793, Eli Whitney invented a simple machine that influenced the history of the United States. He invented a cotton gin that was popular in the South. The South became the cotton producing part of the country because Whitney’s cotton gin was able to successfully pull out the seeds from the cotton bolls.

Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765 and died on January 8, 1825. As a young boy he liked to work in his father’s workshop taking things apart, like clocks, and putting them back together again. When he was a young man, he worked on a Georgian plantation tutoring children. He noticed the trouble the slaves were having picking seed from cotton bolls. In his spare time, he put together an instrument that would allow the slaves to clean more cotton in a shorter amount of time.

The cotton gin was a very simple invention. First, the cotton bolls were put into the top of the machine. Next, you turn the handle, which turns the cotton through the wire teeth that combs out the seeds. Then the cotton is pulled out of the wire teeth and out of the cotton gin.

Farmers were able to plant more cotton. Cotton is easy to grow but because it was so difficult to clean, cotton was not a cash crop. Tobacco and indigo were the South’s cash crops. Tobacco is difficult to grow. Tobacco wears out the land and the land must be given a rest once every 7 years. But cotton can grow anywhere, even on land that is drained of its nutrients.

Now that cotton is easier to clean and since it grows easily, cotton became the number one cash crop in the South. The farmers needed more land to grow cotton. They took the land from the Native Americans. The farmers needed more workers. Slaves were the free labor that the farmers needed to harvest the cotton.

This growth of cotton production affected the world. The Northern part of the United States bought more cotton and built more textile mills. England built more textile mills and demanded much more cotton. These were two big markets to which the South sold their cotton. The South was not able to build textile mills because their capital was tied up in their slaves so that they could produce more cotton. The South also did not have the need or the capital to build up a good transportation system, such as canals and railroads.

During the Civil War, the South had many disadvantages over the North. A large portion of their population were uneducated slaves. They had no factories to produce goods and to become self sufficient when they separated from the North. Because the South had not built up a good transportation system, they were not able to move men and supplies easily across the country, as the North was able to do.

By 1860, cotton was a cash crop. Cotton production in the South had increased. The number of slaves in the United States had increased. The dependency on slaves had increased. Capital had been invested in slaves, not in transportation or factories. All this happened because of a very simple machine, the cotton gin. hope it helps!!