306 COTTON PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



ners, to control and manage the business themselves, by erect- 

 ing machines in all parts of the country, and to gin the cotton 

 at a certain rate per pound, or to buy the cotton before it was 

 separated, and then to control, to a certain extent, the whole 

 crop in the market. It is easy to see how tempting this plan 

 must have seemed to the eyes of Whitney's sanguine partner ; 

 how certain to realize immense and sudden wealth ; and how 

 likely, on the other hand, to arouse the jealous antagonism 

 of the planters on whose eyes were also beginning to dawn 

 bright visions of the wealth, which they too might realize 

 through this new channel. A proposition which might seem 

 to appropriate too large a portion of the profits would be 

 likely to sharpen their doubts of the originality of the inven- 

 tion, and to blunt their sense of justice in using the cotton gin 

 wherever it could be found, or whoever might be in law its 

 proprietor. The recent enactments of the patent law, for it 

 was passed in the early part of 1793, the year in which 

 Whitney's application was made, might also have contributed 

 to the difficuties with which Whitney was called to contend. 

 The law which secures to an inventor his rights is less readily 

 appreciated and respected, than one which guards national 

 property, or bodily life. Besides, under a government so re- 

 cent as that of the Union, the impost of such a law was yet to 

 be settled by actual decisions, and its applications to be 

 tested by verdicts of juries. At this time also money was 

 scarce, and rates of interest were high, so that at the time 

 when a loud call was beginning to be made for the machines, 

 which were to be manufactured by Miller and Whitney, the 

 partners were themselves embarrassed for the want of capital 

 with which to make them. Then again, at one time, Whitney 

 was prostrated by disease also ; and at a second, both being im- 

 portant crises in the fortunes of the infant enterprise, his work- 

 men also were disabled by a fatal epidemic, in July 1794, just 



