; but when he reached that city, he found that
the place had been filled.

While in Savannah, Whitney attracted the attention of the widow of
General Nathanael Greene, who lived at Mulberry Grove, on the river at
no great distance from the city. Mrs. Greene invited the young man to
make his home on her plantation. He soon found opportunity to show his
fine mechanical genius, and Mrs. Greene became more interested in him
than ever.

The story goes, that soon after the young man had established himself on
the Mulberry Grove Plantation, several Georgia planters were dining with
Mrs. Greene. During their conversation the difficulty of removing the
seed from the cotton fiber was mentioned, and the suggestion was made
that this might be done by machinery. At this Mrs. Greene mentioned the
skill and ingenuity of young Whitney, and advised her guests that he
should be given the problem to solve. This advice was followed. The
planters had a talk with the young man, and explained to him the
difficulty which they found in separating the seed from the lint.

At that time one pound of lint cotton was all that a negro woman could
separate from the seed in a day; and the more cotton the planters
raised, the deeper they got in debt. The close of the war had found them
in a state of the utmost poverty, so that they had been compelled to
mortgage their lands in order to get money on which to begin business.
Cotton was the only product of the farm for which there was any constant
demand; but, owing to the labor of separating the lint from the seed,
it could not be raised at a profit. Thus, in 1791, the number of pounds
exported from the South to Europe amounted to only about 379 bales of
500 pounds each.

When the planters went to Whitney with their problem, he was entirely
ignorant of the whole matter. He knew nothing of cotton or of cotton
planting; but he at once set himself at work. He made a careful study of
the cotton plant. He shut himself in a room with some uncleaned cotton,
and worked at his task during a whole winter. He made his own tools at
the plantation blacksmith shop; and all day long, and sometimes far into
the night, he could be heard hammering and sawing away.

In 1793 he called together the planters who had asked him to solve the
problem, and showed them the machine, which he called a cotton gin. When
they saw it work, their surprise and delight knew no bounds. They
knew at once that the problem had been solved b