The cotton gin could clean as much cotton as fifty men could working by hand (Cotton Gin, 1).
The cotton gin projected America into a mechanized world, where machines make work easier for man.
Eli Whitney's cotton gin started the American Industrial Revolution.
Asiatic cotton grew in east Africa five thousand years ago in what is now, Pakistan. Persians
brought the cotton to India where the cotton became more useful. The cotton then went to Italy and
Greece. In 300 B.C., Alexander the Great brought cotton goods into Europe. In the 700's Muslims
started manufacturing processes in Europe. Cotton had reached England by the mid 1600's. England later
imported cotton from the Americans (Cotton 1).
In America, early explorers learned that Indians knew how to make clothing out of cotton. The
one bad thing was, cotton clothing took a very long time to make.
In 1789, Samuel Slater, an Englishman, came to the United States and build the first cotton mill.
A cotton gin on display at the Eli Whitney Museum.
English: Lummus cotton gin advertisement, 1896
"The First Cotton Gin" conjectural image from 1869With the mill and Eli Whitney's cotton gin, the cotton industry was booming. Cotton plantations expanded
to about two to three thousand acres apiece.
Today, cotton is much processed much differently than in 1930. In 1930 a farmer had to work
270 hours to produce one bale of cotton. Today it takes us 23 hours. Also, China is the world leader in
producing cotton and Texas is the leading state of cotton production with 4,650,000 bales of cotton per
year. Cotton still ranks as a major income for southern farmers and today it has many more uses such as
cushioning, paper, plastics, and even oil (Cotton 1).
Cotton in the south was not a major cash crop such as tobacco or indigo before the invention of
the cotton gin. The cotton was also tough to...