ion as private tutor in a Georgia family,
which was to change the whole course of his life.

Until he reached the South, he had never seen raw cotton, only a little
of which, indeed, had been raised in the United States. It had not been
profitable because of the difficulty of picking out the green
cottonseed. To separate one pound of the staple from the seed was a
day's work, so that cotton was considered rather as a curiosity than as
a profitable crop. Whitney was impressed by the possibilities of cotton
culture, could this obstacle be overcome, and devoted his spare time to
the construction of the machine upon which his fame rests. At last it
was done, and did its work so perfectly that there could be no question
of its success. Experiments showed that with it, one man, with the aid
of two-horse power, could clean five thousand pounds of cotton a day!

A patent was at once applied for and every effort made to keep the
invention a secret until a patent had been secured. But knowledge of it
swept through the state, and great crowds of people came to see the
machine. Whitney refused to show it, and after much excitement, a mob
one night broke into the building where it was, and carried it away.
Others were at once made, using it as a model, and by the time Whitney
had secured his patent, they were in successful operation in many parts
of the state.

That was the beginning of Whitney's trials. He had not enough money to
produce machines rapidly enough to meet the tremendous demand for them,
and various rivals sprang up, some of them even claiming the honor of
the invention. Other gins were put on the market, differing from
Whitney's only in some unimportant detail, and plainly an infringement
of his patent; but he had not the means to prosecute their
manufacturers. The result was, that after two years of disheartening
struggle, Whitney was reduced to bankruptcy.

The attitude of the South toward him caused him especial distress. "I
have invented a machine," he wrote, "from which the citizens of the
South have already realized immense profits, which is worth to them
millions, and from which they must continue to derive the most important
profits, and in return to be treated as a felon, a swindler, and a
villain, has stung me to the very soul. And when I consider that this
cruel persecution is inflicted by the very persons who are enjoying
these great benefits, and expressly for the purpose of preventing my
ever derivin