Abstract
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This article elaborates the social impact of the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin. Before introduction of the gin, cotton had been a mildly interesting but barely productive crop. That changed dramatically with the advent of the gin. Prior to the gin's introduction, cotton fiber could only be separated from the sticky, embedded seeds by a manual operation. The procedure was so slow that cotton was just barely commercially attractive. So little could be produced that the greatest application was in such specialized little things as candle wicks. An individual would work 10 hours to separate a pound of fiber from seeds. Production increased by a staggering amount with the introduction of the cotton gin. A team of two or three could then process 50 pounds of cotton in a single day. Cotton growing suddenly became lucrative, and an unexpected tidal wave of cotton fields sprang up. It soon became by far the major export of the South.
