Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made

by James Dabney McCabe

ELI WHITNEY.

At the close of the Revolution the States of South Carolina and Georgia presented large tracts of land to the gallant General Nathaniel Greene, to whose genius they were indebted for their relief from British tyranny. Soon after this grant was made, General Greene removed his family to Mulberry Grove, a fine plantation on the Georgia side of the Savannah River. Here he died in 1786, from sunstroke, but his family continued to reside on the place. The mansion of Mrs. Greene was noted for its hospitality, and was frequently filled with guests who came to pay their respects to the widow of the most brilliant and best trusted subordinate of the immortal Washington.

To this mansion there came one day, in the year 1792, Eli Whitney, then a young man recently from New England. He was a native of Westborough, Massachusetts, where he was born on the 8th of December, 1765. Of his youth but little is known, save that he was gifted with unusual mechanical genius, the employment of which enabled him to overcome some of the difficulties incident to his poverty, and to acquire the means of obtaining a good common school education. Adding to this the labors of a teacher, he earned a sum sufficient to carry him through Yale College, where he was graduated in the summer of 1702, a few months before his arrival in Georgia. He had come South to accept the offer of a situation as teacher, but the place had been filled before his arrival, and, being without friends in that section, he sought employment from Mrs. Greene. Though pleased with his modesty and intelligence, that lady could not avail herself of his services as a tutor, but invited him to make her house his home as long as he should desire to remain in Georgia. He was sick in body and disheartened by his first failure, and gladly accepted her invitation. While her guest he made her a tambour frame of an improved pattern, and a number of ingenious toys for her children, which so delighted the good lady that she enthusiastically declared him capable of doing any thing.

Not long after Mr. Whitney's arrival at the plantation, Mrs. Greene was entertaining a number of visitors from the surrounding country, several planters of considerable wealth being among the number, when one of the guests turned the conversation upon the subject of cotton-raising, by declaring that he had met with such poor success that he was ready to abandon the undertaking. His trouble was not, he said, that cotton would not grow in his land, for it yielded an abundant return, but that the labor of clearing it from the seed was so enormous that he could not do more than pay expenses after selling it.

His case was simply one among a thousand. The far Southern States were admitted by every one to be admirably adapted to the cultivation of cotton, but, after it was grown and picked, the expense of cleaning it destroyed nearly all the profits of the transaction. The cleaning process was performed by hand, and it was as much as an able-bodied negro could do to clean one pound per day in this manner. Disheartened by this difficulty, which no one had yet been able to remove, the planters of the South were seriously contemplating the entire abandonment of this portion of their industry, since it only involved them in debt. Their lands were heavily mortgaged, and general ruin seemed to threaten them. All felt that the invention of a machine for cleaning or ginning the cotton would not only remove their difficulties, but enable them to plant the green cotton-seed, from the use of which they were then almost entirely debarred, because, although more productive and of a better quality than the black, and adapted by nature to a much greater variety of climate, it was much more difficult to clean, and therefore less profitable to cultivate.

These facts were discussed in the conversation at Mrs. Greene's table, and it was suggested by one of the company that perhaps the very urgency of the case would induce some ingenious man to invent a machine which should solve the problem, and remove all the difficulties in the way.

"Is it a machine you want?" said Mrs. Greene, eagerly. "Then, gentlemen, you should apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney; he can make any thing."

She at once sent for Whitney, and introduced him to her guests, who repeated to him the substance of their conversation, and urged him to undertake the invention of what was so much needed. The young man protested that he had never seen either a pod of cotton or a cotton-seed in his life, and was utterly incompetent for the task they proposed. In spite of this, however, his new acquaintances urged him to attempt it, and assured him that if successful his invention would make his fortune. Whitney would promise nothing more than to think of the matter, and the planters departed in the belief that nothing would come of their entreaties, and that the culture of cotton would languish until it should finally die out.

Whitney did think of the matter, and the result was that he decided to attempt the production of a machine which should clean cotton both expeditiously and cheaply. It was late in the season, and unginned cotton, or cotton from which the seeds had not been removed, was hard to procure. With considerable difficulty he succeeded in finding a few pounds on the wharf at Savannah, and at once securing his prize, he carried it home in his hands.