me being unsuited to the task, and the work of
pulling off the fibers by hand being both tedious and expensive. In 1792,
the amount exported from the United States was equivalent to only 275
bales.

[Illustration: _Eli Whitney, the schoolmaster inventor of the cotton
gin_]

The next year, 1793, is the most important in the history of cotton
growing in the United States. In the autumn of 1792, Eli Whitney, a young
Massachusetts man who had just been graduated from Yale College, sailed
from New York to South Carolina where he intended to teach school. On
shipboard he met the widow of Nathaniel Greene, the Revolutionary
general. Mrs. Greene invited the youth to begin his residence in the
South on her plantation at Mulberry Grove, Georgia. Here one evening,
some officers, late of General Greene's command, were discussing the
great wealth which might come to the South were there a suitable machine
for removing stubborn Upland fiber from its green seed. The story goes
that while the discussion was at its height, Mrs. Greene said:

"Gentlemen, apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney. He can make
anything."

Whitney commenced work on the problem. A room was set aside as his
workshop, and it was not long before he had produced the beginnings of
the gin. He fixed wire teeth in a board, and found that by pulling the
fibers through with his fingers he could leave the tenacious seed behind.
He carried this basic idea further by putting the teeth on a cylinder and
by providing a rotating brush to clean the fiber from the teeth.

The changes which followed immediately upon the introduction of the
cotton gin were tremendous in scope and almost innumerable. There was a
time, before cotton became a staple, when the South led New England in
manufacturing. That time passed almost immediately. Iron works and coal
mines were abandoned, and men turned their energies from the culture of
corn, rice, and indigo largely to the raising of the cotton.

Expansion in
Production

The following figures, giving production in the equivalent of 500 pound
bales for the year at the close of each ten-year period, give some idea
of the tremendous expansion which ensued.

_500 Pound
_Year_ Bales_
1790 3,138
1800 73,222
1810 177,824
1820 334,728
1830 732,218