George Washington Carver's Biography: Industrial Revolution

Ian Freebern

Mr. Cartmell

English 7

19 Mar. 2018

George Washington Carver Biography

In the mid-1700’s, people started to mass-produce goods because of new inventions and machinery. This became known as the Industrial Revolution. Many inventors helped start the Industrial Revolution. One of those inventors was George Washington Carver. Carver created over three-hundred products with peanuts, and he created over a hundred with sweet potatoes. Carvers invented hundreds of products and his inventions and discoveries really impacted poor farmers and the entire world too.

To start with, Carver was born into slavery and then went on to become one of the most important scientists of his time. Carver was born into slavery somewhere around 1864. The

Carver experimented with crops to see which one returned the most nitrogen back to the soil. Two crops stood out, peanuts and sweet potatoes. In a response, Carver promoted the idea of crop rotation. Crop rotation is the process of switching crops to a different field every year in order to return nutrients to the soil. This allowed cotton to grow properly (“George Washington Carver Movie Transcript”.) Farmers doubted they could make a living off of peanuts. There just wasn’t a high enough demand for them. Carver fixed this problem by creating over three-hundred products with peanuts like paper, soap, shaving cream, flour, lotion, and insulation. This boosted the demand for peanuts high enough for farmers to use them in crop rotation (“George Washington Carver Movie Transcript”.) Carver had solved most of farmers problems, but he needed to spread his ideas. Carver taught his students at Tuskegee Institute, but that wasn’t enough. Carver created a classroom on wheels called the “Jessup Wagon”. Carver went around the country with the “Jessup Wagon”, teaching farmers tricks to use on their farms. Carver never got a patent for most of his work. He claimed they were gifts from God, and that people should be allowed to use it for free. Carver had invented hundreds of products with mostly peanuts and sweet potatoes, and he was a brilliant

Carver found solutions to many farmers’ problems and made no profit from it. He had changed everything for poor farmers by helping them find multiple solutions to their problems like cotton draining nitrogen from the soil. Carver didn’t just impact his students, he also impacted farmers all across the country with the “Jesup Wagon” (“George Washington Carver: Biography, Inventions, and Quotes”.) Carver’s uses from peanuts really impacted farmers because now they could grow them and make enough money from them to live. Before Carver, crop rotation was not commonly used because there were no uses for good nitrogen returning crops like peanuts to make a good profit from. Carver didn’t just help with promoting crop rotation, he also showed his experiments about peanuts to the public about the boll weevil while they almost destroyed the cotton industry (“George Washington Carver Biography”.) Carver’s discoveries deeply impacted the entire world. In his lifetime, he had helped millions of farmers with their problems. In conclusion, George Washington Carver’s inventions deeply impacted the world by teaching farmers how to farm better. The Industrial Revolution would have been completely different if Carver hadn’t shared his discoveries and inventions. Carver helped start the Industrial Revolution by improving agriculture in multiple