Cotton+Gin

=__Cotton Gin__= toc Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. He got a patent for it but people didn't like paying a lot to use his gins. Then they made their own versions and claimed they were new inventions. Whitney was unable to win any lawsuits until the patent law was changed in 1800. The cotton gin allowed farmers to clean as much cotton in a few minutes as a lot of men in a whole day. Cotton then became the number one cash crop in the south. The crop of cotton doubled every decade after 1800. The cotton gin opened up a new factory mass production idea.

Cotton farming before the Cotton Gin
Cotton was easy to grow but it was difficult to clean before the cotton gin. Slaves had to pick out every cotton seed by hand and it was very hard. Farmers needed a way to make cotton more profitable. Cotton wasn't a cash crop before the cotton gin was invented because farmers couldn't produce it very fast. If someone accidentally crushed the seed it would produce an oil that ruined the fiber. It took many men to clean as much cotton in a day as a cotton gin could do in a few minutes. The cotton gin made it much easier to take the seeds out of cotton.

Patents
Eli Whitney wanted to make a machine that he could get a patent on, so he set aside his plans to study law and tried to make one in a workshop that Cathrine Greene let him use. He created a hand cranked cotton gin in a few months. Whitney and Phineas Miller, his business partner, wanted to make a lot of gins and spread them out in Georgia and the rest of the south. Farmers didn't want to go to Whitney's gins because they had to pay a tax so they created their own versions of Whitney's cotton gin and called them new inventions. However, there was a loophole in the wording of the patent act and they couldn't win a lawsuit until 1800. South Carolina agreed to purchase Whitney's patent right for $50,000 in 1800. They also arranged to sell it to a few other states too.

Cotton Gin Factories
The earliest cotton gin factories appeared in the early 1820s. By 1850 the six largest cotton gin manufacturers were creating almost $500,000 in cotton gins in one year. These big manufacturers put small local gin makers out of business. The small gin makers couldn't match the big companies that incorporated the latest improvements in gin technology as they appeared.During the nineteenth century, the southern cotton gin manufacturing sector was one of a few that were able to compete against the northern firms.

System Ginning
A lot of gins were sold to "ginners". People would take seed cotton to them and they would remove it for a small fee. This was called "system ginning". Farmers could then get more money by selling their extra seeds to an oil mill so they could be pressed into cottonseed oil and meal. System ginning helped people focus on improving the whole process of ginning. Ginning productivity increased rapidly. Ginners had to get better equipment or they would quickly go out of business.

Mass Production created after the Cotton Gin
Cotton gins are still used today but instead of slaves using them, workers use them. Eli Whitney was the father of the cotton gin and he is also the father of mass production. This method was created when cotton gins were made very quickly in big quantities. The north won the civil war because of its mass production methods.