INVENTION AND AMERICAN WEALTH 273 



pool, in 1784, they were seized by the customs officers, who 

 did not beheve it possible that so much cotton could be grown 

 in America. At the present time the American cotton crop 

 amounts to 11,000,000 bales. To remove the seed from that 

 amount of cotton by hand would require the labor of 18,000,- 

 000 persons, working every week day for the entire year. 

 And to card, spin, and weave it by hand would require more 

 than the entire population of the country ; and yet, l^y the aid 

 of inventions, America manufactures annually about one 

 fourth of the world's consumption. 



Never was there a truer sentence written than that of 

 the biographer of Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, 

 when he said: ^'This inventor created both personal and 

 national wealth." As Mr. Justice Johnson, of South Caro- 

 lina, said, Whitney's invention had trebled the value of the 

 lands in the south; and it was shown by statistics that the 

 pecuniary benefit to the country during the first forty three 

 years was $1,400,000,000, and since it has amounted to many 

 times that. As was well said by Mr. Lanman, ''Whitney's 

 invention had given an impulse to the agriculture of the south 

 which has remained unimpaired to this day, and which would 

 endure while the cotton plant whitens the plantations with 

 its snowy blossoms, or the machinery of the cotton mill con- 

 tinues its clatter at the waterfalls." 



And though the south was slow to avail itself of the bene- 

 fits to be derived from the manufacture of the cotton there, 

 she has now taken hold of it with a will, for she already has 

 450 cotton mills, with about 5,000,000 spindles. And it is 

 a singular fact that South Carolina, which, in 1828, threatened 

 nullification because of the tariff designed to build up Amer- 

 ican manufactures, now ranks next to Massachusetts in the 

 number of her cotton mills. 



In 1870 Great Britain produced nearly 59 per cent of 

 the world's supply of pig iron, and the United States but 15 

 per cent. Since 1870 Great Britain's product has increased 

 but 29 per cent, while that of the United States has increased 

 4030 per cent. To-day the United States is the ironmaster 

 of the world, and that fact is mainly due to American inven- 

 tions; for, as the superintendent of one of the large steel works 



Vol. 7—18 



