INGENUITY AND LUXURY 



mentioned among the other products. The climate 

 of the South must early have appealed to the settlers 

 as peculiarly adapted to cotton-raising, since the semi- 

 tropical temperature, and relatively small amount of 

 rainfall provided ideal conditions. Cotton-planters, 

 therefore, began settling all through the southern dis- 

 tricts, and by the time of the Revolutionary War 

 cotton had become one of the staple American exports. 

 Until the latter part of the nineteenth century, and, 

 in fact, until the close of the Civil War, India more 

 than held her own in the matter of cotton production. 

 Since that time, however, cotton-raising in the South 

 has advanced with such rapid strides that at present 

 over sixty per cent, of all the cotton in the world is 

 grown south of the Ohio River, and north of the Rio 

 Grande. Over seven million people are occupied in 

 handling this crop, which is valued at about $500,000,000 

 annually; and something like seventy per cent, of 

 the output is exported. 



ELI WHITNEY AND THE COTTON-GIN 



For many centuries the most tedious and difficult 

 part of the cotton harvest was the separation of the 

 seeds from the fibers, an operation called " ginning." 

 The seeds stick to the cotton-fibers interwoven about 

 them so tenaciously that by the old method of hand- 

 ginning only a few pounds of cotton-fiber could be 

 separated in a day by the workman. This was the 

 great drawback to the use of cotton-fabrics, as a 

 substance so difficult to harvest was proportionately 



[8] 





