The industrial revolution was a very important time in America. It was a period of social, industrial, and agricultural change. It began in the late 1700s. Britain’s industrial revolution happened before Americas because they had more natural resources to begin making machines. The first industry that began the revolution was the textile industry. All work in the textile industry was done by hand and was usually very time consuming and difficult. One invention that would change the textile industry and the history of the US forever was the cotton gin. The cotton gin, short for cotton engine, was invented by Eli Whitney. Whitney went to Yale and thought about becoming a lawyer. After he graduated, he got a job as a tutor on a plantation …show more content…
The problem with the cotton was that it was hard to separate the fibers from the seeds because the seeds are very sticky. Whitney came up with two versions of the cotton gin, a smaller one that could be hand cranked, and a larger one that could be harnessed to a horse or could be driven by water power. The cotton gin will have many positive and negative effects on the country. Before the cotton gin, the south mostly produced tobacco. The tobacco would do damage to the soil which made it hard to grow the crops. Cotton wasn’t a successful crop because all the difficulties it took to produce it. Afterwards, it became America’s most successful crop and the biggest export. The demand for cotton went up and so did the need for more plantations, and slaves. The price of slaves was very low before the cotton gin was invented, because there was less of a need for them (Nevins,82). So as the crops began to get more successful, they began to spread into the south west and bigger plantations were being built. The price and need for slaves then went up and It brought up the debate on whether or not slavery as right or wrong. With the growing number of plantations and slaves being use on them, and the debating about the issue, it would later help lead to the civil …show more content…
The first engines used in America were purchased from England. The first railroad built in the US was the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. Construction started in July 1828 and it was built there because Baltimore was the 3rd largest state, and they didn’t have a canal for easy transportation. The railroad was built to help them compete with New York and the Erie Canal (“Early American Railroads”, web). There were more than 5 operating railroads by 1835 and would grow even more
The cotton gin decreased the amount of slavery that took place in the South, lessened the dispute due to slavery, and also improved their economic growth. If Eli Whitney never came up with the idea for the cotton gin, none of this would have
Before the cotton gin was invented there weren’t need for many slaves. They cotton business wasn’t a money making business because of how long it took to produce cotton and seeds. I once was in Georgia and picked a big garbage bag full of it took me a year to remove the seeds from half the bag. Since the cotton gin removed all the seeds and took less time there was need for more slaves to speed the process of picking from the fields. The cotton gin made this business a moneymaker causing increased need for slavery.
In 1793 the cotton industry bloomed because of Eli Whitney when he invented the cotton gin. With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable industry, creating many fortunes for white plantation owners in the antebellum South. “American inventor Eli Whitney and his cotton gin improved the cleaning of raw cotton, facilitating the continuing growth of the industry in many locales.” This proves that the cotton industry rose after the gin was invented. It is evident that Eli Whitney played a major part of the growth of the cotton industry. Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry.
One of the most important events caused by the cotton gin was the exile of the Cherokee Indians along the Trail of Tears. As the demand for cotton and slaves grew the South began to look for more land, and discovered it in the land owned by the Cherokee Indians. The land was taken from them beginning in 1828 when the Georgia government outlawed the Cherokee government and began to take the land. This continued until 1838 when, despite a Supreme Court order, federal troops drove the last of the Cherokee from the land, that covered Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to Oklahoma where many of them died. This would not have occurred had it not been for the invention of the cotton gin. The cotton gin created a market for slavery. As the production of cotton rose so did the production of slavery. These enterprises needed land, which stimulated the wars against the Indians to take their land, which could then be used by cotton farmers, and plantation holders who bred slaves. Whitney’s cotton gin, and its ripple effect was having a major impact on the events in the American South.
Southerner farmers had previously attempted to grow cotton, some the American society desperately lacked, and however these farmers soon gave up and decide to focus on producing rice and tobacco crops. Cotton had proved to be far too intense labor and was extremely inefficient. It would take one slave a whole workday to separate only one pound of cottonseed from the fibers of the plant. So when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which was able to separate the seeds from the fibers with ease, it allowed slaves to produce upwards of fifty pounds of cotton in a workday. This invention revolutionized the cotton industry, the southerners were producing and the crop and harvesting so that the northerners could manufacture cotton
In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a machine that removed seeds from cotton fiber. The cotton gin had a very important impact on society and economy. It was a basic, uncomplicated invention, yet, had a major effect during the Industrial Revolution (the change from an agrarian society to one based on industry which began in Great Britain and spread to the United States around 1800). The inventor, Eli Whitney, was encouraged by the system of free enterprise, the freedom of private businesses to operate competitively for profit with minimal government regulation, to invent a machine that would remove cotton seeds from cotton quickly. As a result, he invented the cotton gin which basically removed seeds from cotton in a fast and
4. One very crucial machine shaped life in the South. Separating the seeds from a cotton was a slow process and planters needed a better way to clean cotton. To solve the planters’ problem, a young Connecticut school teacher, Eli Whitney, invented a machine that had two rollers with thin wire teeth, which would separate the seeds from the fibers when cotton was swept between the rollers. This gave workers an advantage from other workers. For example, a person using a
The cotton gin, invented by a man of the name Eli Whitney, might be one of the most influential invention in its time. This was one of the most important inventions of the industrial revolution and shaped the the South into what it has become today. Whitney's invention made cotton into a very profitable crop, which helped the economic situation of slavery. Despite the impact of his invention, Whitney lost his profits in legal battles over patent infringement, and nearly filed bankruptcy.
There were many important developments to the cotton industry that came about due to the Industrial Revolution. The problem the cotton industry had was due to inadequate machinery or the lack of machinery. Clothes and other things that came from the cotton industry were being produced way too slowly and the price of the material was way too expensive for the average family. The first problem was that yarn was not being fed fast enough to the weaver, but in 1769, two new inventions solved the problem, the spinning jenny and the water-powered frame, both of which provided yarn faster. Edmund Cartwright, who invented the power loom, combined the machine’s characteristics and purposes into one machine in 1800. Cleaning cotton was also a tedious and time-consuming job, so in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which could clean cotton 50 times faster than the previous outdated methods. Many people would actually walk around in filthy garments all of their lives but because of the new inventions they could afford to buy undergarments.
Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin in 1973. Whitney's machine could produce up to 50 pounds of cleaned cotton daily, making southern cotton a profitable crop for the first time.It was essentially a box with a hand-cranked cylinder that would feed cotton through small, narrow slots, just wide enough for the cotton to come through, but too small for the seeds. The seeds would then drop to the bottom and the cotton would be seedless. The amount of cotton it produced in one day would have taken months
At about this same time Eli Whitney had invented the cotton gin. Though his original intention was to ease the slave’s tasks, the cotton gin did exactly the opposite. Cotton was as profitable than ever, were as before it would take a slave a day to remove the seeds from a pound of cotton it now took maybe a couple minutes. Slaves were worked harder and harder and were as vital of an element to the plantation as cotton itself.
The industrial revolution did not take place over night, on the contrary it was almost a century long affair. It’s important to remember that when the United States was just beginning the start if their revolution Britain had been already thriving. One of the earliest markings of the start in the U.S was in late eighteenth century when Samuel Slater brought new manufacturing technologies from Britain to help start the first U.S cotton mill. Within the next few decades mills and factories were pooping up allover the northeast. On top of that development of transportation boomed with railroads and new canals being built to help with commerce and trade.
The invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, was a problem for the cotton growing South. Cotton was a major staple for the South because it was becoming a very profitable commodity for the southern states. This would mean that the south would need more laborers and that meant more slaves to work the plantations. This invention turned the South into a one crop economy. Meanwhile in the North they were an economy based on agriculture. The North was using raw cotton and turning it into finish goods. This would cause a rift in the economy of the north and the south. This change meant the evolution of the North would bring many different races and classes having to work together to accomplish
In the south, the cotton gin was the technological breakthrough that drove the southern economy into a cotton centered economy. In 1793, Eli Whitney patented the first cotton gin. The cotton gin was a, “Machine, or “engine,” that used metal pins fitted into
The cotton gin is the most revolutionary product of our century! The beautifully handcrafted invention has improved our productivity by almost double. Since the day it was invented, our economy took a turn for the better, steadily increasing amounts of cash flowing into our pockets then to the welfare of our citizens. In our history this must be the most successful invention ever, created by the great Eli Whitney. The Cotton Gin works by separating the seeds from the cotton we use so much of. With our newfound cotton, we can