Historic Inventions

by Rupert Sargent Holland

But in spite of his disclaimer he began to consider whether he could make a machine that would help to separate the seed from the cotton. He went to see a neighbor, Phineas Miller, and talked over his plans with him. Miller became interested, and gave him a room in his house where he might carry on his experiments. He had to use very primitive implements, making his own tools and drawing his own wire. He worked quietly, only Mr. Miller and Mrs. Greene knowing what he was doing.

Whitney worked on his machine all the winter of 1793, and by spring it was far enough completed to assure him of success. Mr. Miller, who was a lawyer with a taste for mechanics, and who was, again like Eli Whitney, a New Englander and graduate of Yale, married Mrs. Greene after the General’s death. It was he who actually made Whitney’s machine a business possibility by proposing that he should become a partner with the inventor, and bear all the expenses of manufacturing it until they should secure their patent. They drew up a legal agreement to this effect, dated May 27, 1793, and stipulating that all the profits should be equally divided between them.

There followed very soon the first dramatic scenes in the long battle between the owners of the cotton-gin and the public. The Southern people knew how invaluable such an invention would be to them; it meant food and shelter and better living all along the line; it would increase the value of their property a hundredfold. So as soon as it became bruited abroad that Eli Whitney had such a machine in his workroom that spot became the Mecca for the countryside. Crowds came to beg for a look at the wonderful machine, and hung about the house and plotted to get in. But Whitney and Miller were afraid to let people see the invention until they had made sure of their patents on it, and so they refused to let the crowds have a look at it. Then the more reckless of the crowds threw all sense of fairness to the winds, and broke into Mr. Miller’s house, seized the machine, and carried it off with them. Soon it was publicly displayed, and before Whitney could finish his model for the Patent Office a dozen machines, similar to his, were in use in the cotton fields.

Whitney’s cotton-gin was made of two cylinders of different diameters, mounted in a strong wooden frame. One cylinder had a number of small circular saws that were fitted into grooves cut into the cylinder. The other cylinder was covered with brushes, and so placed that the tips of the bristles of these brushes touched the saw-teeth. The raw cotton was put in a hopper, where it was met by the teeth of the saws, and torn from the seeds. The brushes then swept the cotton clear of the gin. The seeds were too large to go between the bars through which the series of saws protruded, and were kept apart by themselves. Of course many improvements were made upon this machine, but it was found that even in this original form it would enable one man, using two horse-power, to clean the seed from five thousand pounds of cotton in a day. That meant that fortunes could be made in the hitherto disregarded cotton fields of the South.

Whitney now went to Connecticut to finish certain improvements on the machine, to secure his patents, and to begin the manufacturing of as many gins as his partner Miller should find were needed in Georgia. The partners’ wrote frequently to each other, and their letters show the fierceness of the struggle they were waging to protect their rights. “It will be necessary,” wrote Miller, “to have a considerable number of gins in readiness to send out as soon as the patent is obtained in order to satisfy the absolute demands and make people’s heads easy on the subject; for I am informed of two other claimants for the honor of the invention of the cotton-gin in addition to those we knew before.”

The two men did everything in their power to hasten the building of their gins. They knew their rivals were unscrupulous, and were in fact already trying their best to prejudice the minds of the more conservative Georgia cotton-growers against them. But money was very scarce, and the manufacture of the machines proved so costly that Whitney found it impossible to furnish as many gins as his partner wanted.

Whitney applied for his patent in 1793. The following April he went back to Georgia, where he found unusually large crops of cotton had been planted, in expectation of using the gin. As there were not enough of his gins ready rivals were pushing their inferior machines. One of these, called the roller-gin, destroyed the seeds by crushing them between two revolving cylinders, instead of separating them by teeth. A large part of the crushed seed was, however, apt to stay in the cotton after it had passed through the machine, and this form of gin did not therefore produce as satisfactory results as did Whitney’s. Another rival was the saw-gin, which was almost identical with Whitney’s gin, except that the saw-teeth were cut in circular rings of iron instead of being made of wire. This machine infringed the partners’ patents, and caused them an almost endless series of expensive lawsuits.

Two years of conflict in the South proved the superiority of Whitney’s invention over all other machines, but resulted in little actual profit. In March, 1795, he went north to New York, where he was kept for several weeks by illness. When he got back to his factory in New Haven he found that fire had wiped out his workshop, together with all his gins and papers. He was $4,000 in debt, and virtually bankrupt. Yet he had great courage, and fortunately his partner Miller had the same faith. When Whitney sent him the news from New Haven, Miller replied, “I think we ought to meet such events with equanimity. We have been pursuing a valuable object by honorable means, and I trust that all our measures have been such as reason and virtue must justify. It has pleased Providence to postpone the attainment of this object. In the midst of the reflections which your story has suggested, and with feelings keenly awake to the heavy, the extensive injury we have sustained, I feel a secret joy and satisfaction that you possess a mind in this respect similar to my own—that you are not disheartened, that you do not relinquish the pursuit, and that you will persevere, and endeavor, at all events, to attain the main object. This is exactly consonant to my own determinations. I will devote all my time, all my thoughts, all my exertions, and all the money I can earn or borrow to encompass and complete the business we have undertaken; and if fortune should, by any future disaster, deny us the boon we ask, we will at least deserve it. It shall never be said that we have lost an object which a little perseverance could have attained. I think, indeed, it will be very extraordinary if two young men in the prime of life, with some share of ingenuity, and with a little knowledge of the world, a great deal of industry, and a considerable command of property, should not be able to sustain such a stroke of misfortune as this, heavy as it is.”

Whitney attempted to rebuild his factory, but the affairs of the firm were in extreme jeopardy. He had to pay twelve per cent. a year to borrow money for his work. Then certain English manufacturers reported that the cotton that was cleaned by Whitney’s gin was not of good quality. The struggle was a hard one. He wrote to Miller, “The extreme embarrassments which have been for a long time accumulating upon me are now become so great that it will be impossible for me to struggle against them many days longer. It has required my utmost exertions to exist without making the least progress in our business. I have labored hard against the strong current of disappointment which has been threatening to carry us down the cataract, but I have labored with a shattered oar and struggled in vain, unless some speedy relief is obtained.... Life is but short at best, and six or seven years out of the midst of it is to him who makes it an immense sacrifice. My most unremitted attention has been devoted to our business. I have sacrificed to it other objects from which, before this time, I might certainly have gained $20,000 or $30,000. My whole prospects have been embarked in it, with the expectation that I should before this time have realized something from it.”