How Did Eli Whitney Affect The Economy

Eli Whitney was born on December 8, 1765 in Westborough, Massachusetts. He grew up on a farm, and he was talented with machinery work and technology. He was young and grew up during the revolutionary war, he perfected his skill of making nails from an invention he made. When opportunity came, he would spend his time crafting canes for women. Eli Whitney studied at Yale before he invented the Cotton Gin. The Cotton Gin was a device that highly streamlined the process of extracting fiber from cotton seeds. In 1789, Whitney started to attend Yale College and graduated in 1792. Originally, Whitney wanted to become a lawyer. Whitney was hired after graduating to become a tutor in South Carolina. On his way to his new position, he met Catherine Greene who was a widow during the revolutionary war. They had cut his original salary in half, and that caused him to refuse the job and take on studying law for Greene instead. Greene saw the lack of money being made from

A phrase commonly used to describe the economy in America during these time periods is “Cotton is King”. It was the first mass consumer commodity. It was also one of the world’s first luxury commodities, next to sugar and tobacco. Cotton also turned many black human beings into commodities themselves. Unfortunately, slavery was a key component in the production of cotton. The demand for cotton doubled each decade following Whitneys invention and so the demand for slave labor rose. The South wanted to import slaves to produce cotton but the North did not. The slave population swelled to 4 million people during the production of cotton. The idea of the Cotton Gin suddenly made slavery profitable. After the invention of the Cotton Gin, cotton became America’s leading crop. In 1790, America produced 1,500 pounds of cotton. By the 1800’s production had increased to 35,000 pounds. By 1848 production exceeded to 1,000,000 pounds. Simultaneously, slavery spread across the