COTTON 217 



we do not know. Whether or not the thought had 

 its birth in his fertile mind is also a mystery. But 

 this matters not. He became interested in the 

 great problem of profitable cotton production. 

 Maybe this was a problem of the plantation where 

 he resided; maybe the thought came as a chance 

 suggestion. Be that as it may, he made the prob- 

 lem his. He fitted up his shop and went to work. 

 His educational equipment and his mechanical 

 inclination favored him, and soon hope came, the 

 clouds parted, the ideal became more than a fancy. 

 Soon it was a reality, the cotton gin a material 

 thing. 



Of course it was crude, undeveloped, only par- 

 tially practical at first. The next year the patent 

 was granted and given to the world. 



The germinal idea was alive, its incubation soon 

 ended, the gin was born, soon to be a working suc- 

 cess; soon to make an industry; soon to build an 

 aristocracy; soon to make the fortunes of men and 

 nations. 



One of the first inventors who contributed to the 

 success and perfecting of the gin was Hodgin 

 Holmes of Georgia. As early as 1796 he secured 

 a patent on his gin which represented some use- 

 ful features not possessed by the Whitney patent. 



THE MAGNITUDE OF THE INVENTION 



The cotton gin is an example, perhaps the most 

 remarkable on record, of the power of a single 

 labor-saving machine to influence the social and 

 industrial interests, not merely of a nation, but in 

 a great measure of the civilized world. "What 

 Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant," 

 says Ma^aulay, "Eli Whitney's invention of the 



