Ely Whitney (0)

Eli Whitney
Whitney was born in Westborough, Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765 , the eldest child of Eli Whitney Sr., a prosperous farmer .
At age fourteen he operated a profitable nail manufacturing operation in his father 's workshop during the Revolutionary War.[2] Because his stepmother opposed his wish to attend college, Whitney worked as a farm laborer and schoolteacher to save money . He prepared for Yale at Leicester Academy (now Becker College) and under the tutelage of Rev.Elizur Goodrich of Durham, Connecticut he entered the Class of 1789.
Whitney expected to study law but, finding himself short of funds, accepted an offer to go to South Carolina as a private tutor. Instead of reaching his destination, he was convinced to visit Georgia . Georgia was a magnet for New Englanders seeking their fortunes.

• He invented the cotton gin, which was the beginning of his success.
  
• After he failed in his cotton gin business, Whitney worked with interchangeable parts.
  

Whitney is most famous for two innovations which later divided the United States in the mid- 19th century: the cotton gin (1793), and his advocacy of interchangeable parts. In the South, the cotton gin revolutionized the way cotton was harvested and reinvigorated slavery. While in the North , the adoption of interchangeable parts revolutionized the manufacturing industry, and in time contributed greatly to their victory in the Civil War.[3]

• He died on January 8 , 1825 at the age of 59
  

The cotton gin is a mechanical device which removes the seeds from cotton, and it had been extremely labor -intensive. The cotton gin was a wooden drum stuck with hooks, which pulled the cotton fibers through a mesh. The cotton seeds would not fit through the mesh and fell outside. Whitney occasionally told a story where he was pondering an improved method of seeding the cotton and he was inspired by observing a cat attempting to pull a chicken through a fence , and could only pull through some of the feathers .
A single cotton gin could generate up to fifty-five pounds of cleaned cotton daily.
The introduction of Cotton Gins to plantations increased productivity because more slaves could be used to harvest product which, in turn , lead to a colossal boom in the South’s economic power (since cotton was America’s main export and was grown only in the South).

• Encouraged Southern business leaders and politicians to continue to embrace slavery because the cheap labor supplied by slavery was the backbone of said power.
  

It was economic development of the Southern states and it allowed for the slavery system in the Southern United States to become more sustainable at a critical point in its development.
Ultimately, patent infringement lawsuits consumed the profits and their cotton gin company went out of business in 1797.
The cotton gin transformed Southern agriculture and the national economy. Southern cotton found ready markets in Europe and in the burgeoning textile mills of New England . Cotton agriculture revived the profitability of slavery and the political power of supporters of the South's "peculiar institution." American politics were driven by "King Cotton": maintaining the political balance between slave and free states and tariff protection for American industry. Cotton exports from the South boomed after the cotton gin's appearance (going from 180,000 pounds of total cotton production in 1793 to 93 million tons by 1810) while New England manufacturing companies struggled to compete against imported goods and clamored for tariff protection. The cotton interests led the country into war with Mexico. Cotton was a staple that could be stored for long periods and shipped long distances, unlike most agricultural food production.
Paradoxically, the cotton gin, a labor-saving device, helped preserve the weakening arguments for slavery, since cheap (slave) labor was needed to pick cotton. Later, the 20th century invention of the cotton-picker reduced the labor-intensive demands of cotton farming, and brought unemployment to many poor Southerners.
By the late 1790s, Whitney was on the verge of bankruptcy and cotton gin litigation had left him deeply in debt. His New Haven cotton gin factory had burned to the ground , and litigation sapped his remaining resources. The French Revolution had ignited new conflicts between Great Britain, France , and the United States. The new American government , realizing the need to prepare for war, began to rearm. The War Department issued contracts for the manufacture of 10,000 muskets. Whitney, who had never made a gun in his life, obtained a contract in January, 1798 to deliver ten to fifteen thousand muskets in 1800. Ten months later, Treasury Secretary Wolcott sent him a " foreign pamphlet on arms manufacturing techniques," possibly one of Honoré Blanc's reports, after which Whitney first began to talk about interchangeability. After spending most of 1799-1801 in cotton gin litigation, Whitney began promoting the idea of interchangeable parts, and even arranged a public demonstration of the concept in order to gain time. He did not deliver on the contract until 1809, but then spent the rest of his life publicizing the idea of interchangeability.
Whitney's defenders have claimed that he invented the American system of manufacturing -- the combination of power machinery, interchangeable parts, and division of labor that would underlie the nation 's subsequent industrial revolution. While there is persuasive evidence that he failed to achieve interchangeability, his use of power machinery and specialized division of labor are well documented. Whitney was able to calculate an actual price per musket by including fixed costs such as insurance and machinery, which the government had not included . He thus made early contributions to both the concept of cost accounting , and the concept of the efficiency of private industry.