Cotton Gin Research Paper

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What if there was a machine that changed the course of history forever? There was and it was called the cotton gin. Created by Eli Whitney in the 18th century, it caused a great movement throughout the world. The Cotton Gin’s sole use was to allow an easier method of separating the valuable cotton fiber from the small seed. Before its introduction, cotton was barely of use because it was inefficient to harvest. However after it was created, cotton became an important crop in the southern states of the U.S.

Before the cotton gin, the southern states of the United States had many areas with farmland and planted a variety of plants, such as indigo, rice and above all tobacco. The owners of farmland and were wealthy had slaves to do their work, However, slavery was uncommon because of how costly and inefficient it is. According to “measuringworth.com”, a slave in 1790 would cost anywhere between “45,000” and “134,000 of a slave's expected revenue less maintenance costs.” in todays money and most people would not have been able to afford that. Cotton was also an uncommon crop because it was difficult to harvest it and tear the sticky seed of the cotton plant from the useful fiber. According to “civilwar.org”, “Before Whitney’s gin entered into widespread use, the …show more content…
Since it was actually much more efficient to harvest this expensive cotton, more people in the south began planting it. Because of the large cotton influence, many people began to buy slaves so they could mass produce it resulting in five times as many slaves. This lead to new industries in the north to prepare the cotton and export it everywhere else in the world. In fact according to “civilwarhistory.org”, “By 1850 that amount had exploded to 2.85 million bales.” This was nearly four times as much cotton as before the cotton gin! The southern states of the United States had earned the nickname the “Cotton
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